Feedback Effects and the Criminal Justice Bureaucracy: Officer Attitudes and the Future of Correctional Reform

Although political scientists have documented the effects of incarceration on those serving time in prison and jail, there has been much less discussion about feedback effects on the attitudes of those who work in correctional institutions. This is a considerable oversight, given the enormous growth of the correctional workforce and its importance in the implementation of crime policy. In this article, we present original survey data from a large sample of California correctional officers. Our analyses suggest that characteristics of the institutions where correctional officers work—the levels of violence to which they are exposed, the proportion of inmates involved in high-quality rehabilitation programs, as well as the quality of management—help to shape officers’ attitudes toward rehabilitation. These dynamics have important implications for how public policies can create political constituencies among criminal justice officers. The attitudes of these officers should therefore be a concern for scholars, advocates, and practitioners who are interested in political strategies for long-term, meaningful reform to the correctional system.