Criminal Justice Staff’s Professional Quality of Life and Interactions with Justice-Involved Individuals: The Moderating Role of Stigma

ABSTRACT

Criminal justice staff work in a challenging setting and yet are often expected to promote positive change in justice-involved individuals. This study examined the 1) types of supportive interactions criminal justice staff engage in with justice-involved individuals, 2) association between staff’s professional quality of life (i.e. burnout, secondary traumatic stress, compassion satisfaction) and their endorsement of supportive interactions, and 3) the moderating impact of stigmatizing attitudes. Criminal justice staff across the U.S. (n = 152) completed demographic questionnaires, the Professional Quality of Life-V, Attitudes Toward Prisoners scale, and endorsed types of supportive interactions they engaged in with justice-involved individuals in the past year. Bivariate correlations, Poisson regressions, and moderation analyses were conducted. Staff with traditional helping roles (e.g. psychologists), higher degrees obtained, and more compassion satisfaction (i.e. one’s gratification from their job) engaged in more types of supportive interactions. Staff with more stigma toward justice-involved individuals engaged in fewer types of supportive interactions. Staff’s stigma, as a moderator, strengthened the association between compassion satisfaction and the types of supportive interactions staff endorsed. Criminal justice agencies should continue training to improve working relationships between staff and clients, increase compassion satisfaction, and reduce stigma to potentially impact justice-involved individuals’ behavior during and after incarceration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

East Tennessee State University Research Development Committee. Johanna Folk received salary support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse [K23DA050798; PI: Folk]. The funders had no role in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the article for publication. The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors

Notes on contributors

Shania L. Siebert

Shania L. Siebert, M.S. is a graduate student in the clinical psychology doctoral program at East Tennessee State University. Her research interests include examining the impact of substance use, trauma, and stigma on individuals involved with and employed by the criminal justice system by exploring these factors’ and how to mitigate their negative influences to increase people with criminal records’ personal wellbeing and staffs’ occupational wellbeing.

Mandy D. Owens

Mandy D. Owens, PhD is an Assistant Professor with the Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute under the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Her work aims to improve services for people who use alcohol and drugs with a focus on those involved with the criminal legal system. Dr. Owens works with jails and prisons to implement medications for opioid use disorder programs, develops training for law enforcement and other first responders, and uses policy codesign to improve local law enforcement responses to drug use. She also leads and partners on other projects, including a needs assessment of Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) for loved ones of patients on medications for opioid use disorder, multi-site replication study of low barrier community-based buprenorphine, a pilot study using policy codesign to develop adolescent behavioral health systems, and training for SAMHSA-funded State Opioid Response sites. Dr. Owens is an attending psychologist at the University of Washington Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic. She specializes in the treatment of substance use disorders and supports family members of individuals with substance use concerns using a CRAFT approach.

Johanna B. Folk

Johanna B. Folk is an Assistant Professor, Attending Psychologist, and Director of Research, Evaluation and Analysis in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Dr. Folk’s research and clinical work focus on addressing the behavioral health needs of youth and families impacted by the legal system. She uses community engaged and longitudinal research methods to understand the effects of trauma and legal system contact on adolescent trajectories, as well as leveraging technology to develop and test novel interventions.

Kelly E. Moore

Kelly E. Moore, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at East Tennessee State University. Dr. Moore received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from George Mason University in 2016 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in substance use prevention research at Yale School of Medicine before beginning her position at ETSU. Her research interests include understanding and reducing factors that contribute to criminal justice system involvement and poor adjustment after release from incarceration, as well as the adaptation of evidence-based treatments for justice-involved populations. Dr. Moore has focused much of her work on understanding the psychological and behavioral consequences of stigma associated with criminal involvement and substance use disorder. Her recent work has centered around stigma reduction interventions for justice-involved people and criminal justice staff.