Correctional orientation among rehabilitation officers in Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services

Abstract

The orientation of correctional officers has a significant influence in the effectiveness of correctional rehabilitation treatments or programs and the successful reintegration of offenders after completion of prison sentence. The purpose of this study is to explore the professional orientations of rehabilitation officers in the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services. This will be done by looking at individual attributes and organisational attributes as potential predictors of attitudes, in relation to their views on ideological orientation. The researcher’s motivation for this study is the apparent failure of rehabilitation efforts in the prisons services despite the ZPCS mission statement. The research is focused on the correctional officers rather than on the rehabilitation programs because there has not been much research on correctional orientation in Zimbabwe, yet correctional officers are at the center of the rehabilitation policy. This study is exploratory and cross-sectional in nature. The sample consisted of 149 correctional officers both males and females, with variations in other individual attributes and organisation attributes. Three standardised questionnaire for punitive, custody and rehabilitation orientation and demographics questionnaire was used to gather data. Results showed a significant association between age, gender, level of education, length of service in maximum and minimum security prisons with punitive-ness. Rank, place of residence and level of education were found to have a significant association with rehabilitative orientation. Furthermore, most of the respondents were found to be rehabilitation-oriented whilst some were found custodial and a few punitive-oriented.