The Development of Prison Officers’ Job Satisfaction and its Impact on Depersonalization of Incarcerated Persons: The Role of Organizational Dehumanization

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00938548221087182
• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Date: 01 November 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2022, Vol. 49, No. 11, November 2022, 1600 –1617.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548221087182

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© 2022 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRISON OFFICERS’

JOB SATISFACTION AND ITS IMPACT ON

DEPERSONALIZATION OF INCARCERATED

PERSONS

The Role of Organizational Dehumanization

FLORENCE STINGLHAMBER

NATHAN NGUYEN

MARYSE JOSSE

STÉPHANIE DEMOULIN

Université catholique de Louvain

This article contributes to the literature on the antecedents and consequences of prison officers’ job satisfaction. First, we

argue that organizational dehumanization (i.e., employees’ perceptions of being treated as tools by their organization)

explains how work environment factors determine job satisfaction. Second, we propose that the role played by organizational

dehumanization in the development of job satisfaction carries over depersonalization of incarcerated persons. The study

(N = 357 Belgian prison officers) supports the mediating role of organizational dehumanization in the relationships between

four work environment factors (organizational justice, appropriateness of material resources, quality of the physical environ-

ment, and perceived organizational support compared with that of the persons who are incarcerated) and job satisfaction. In

addition, the findings indicate that prison officers’ perception of being dehumanized by their prison trickles down in the

development of depersonalized relationships with incarcerated persons, and this effect is mediated by prison officers’ job

satisfaction.

Keywords: prison officers’ job satisfaction; work environment factors; organizational dehumanization; depersonalization;

incarcerated persons

Job satisfaction (JS) is a concept studied across a variety of work contexts and the prison

environment makes no exception. Research on prison officers’ JS has shown that this

employee attitude plays a pivotal role in penitentiary live. On one hand, a great deal of

attention has been devoted to identifying its antecedents (for a review, see Lambert et al.,

2002). In particular, research has provided evidence of the strong influence of factors related

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We have no known conflict of interest to disclose. This work was supported by ARC under

grant no. 16/20-071 of the French Community of Belgium awarded to the first and the last author. Correspondence

concerning this article should be addressed to Florence Stinglhamber, Université catholique de Louvain, Place

Cardinal Mercier, 10, L3.05.01, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; e-mail: florence.stinglhamber@uclouvain.be.

1087182CJBXXX10.1177/00938548221087182Criminal Justice and BehaviorStinglhamber et al. / ORGANIZATIONAL DEHUMANIZATION

research-article2022

Stinglhamber et al. / ORGANIZATIONAL DEHUMANIZATION 1601

to prison officers’ work environment (e.g., role stressors, job autonomy, etc.). What is not

clear at this point, however, are the underlying mechanisms through which work environ-

ment factors operate. In this article, we propose that organizational dehumanization (OD)

plays such a role.

OD refers to the experience of an employee of being “objectified by his or her organiza-

tion, denied personal subjectivity, and made to feel like a tool or an instrument for the orga-

nization’s ends” (Bell & Khoury, 2011, p. 170). Recent literature has shown that OD relates

to a myriad of consequences, among which reduced JS. In addition, research has also estab-

lished that OD varies as a function of work environment factors similar to the ones that act

as antecedents to JS (Bell & Khoury, 2016; Caesens et al., 2017, 2019; Taskin et al., 2019).

Consequently, we argue that an important cognitive mechanism explaining the relationship

between these antecedents and JS is the perception prison officers have that their peniten-

tiary institution treats them humanely, that is, OD. The first aim of this article is thus to

examine the mediating role of OD between prison officers’ JS and some of its work envi-

ronment antecedents.

On the other hand, previous research has shown that prison officers’ JS has significant

consequences and is therefore of the utmost importance to correctional administrators.

More precisely, scholars have reported that it affects prison functioning (e.g., turnover rate),

prison officers themselves (e.g., their health), but also their relationships with individuals

who are incarcerated (for a review, see Lambert et al., 2002). In addition to examining the

important role of OD in the decline of JS, we thus aim at further examining the conse-

quences of the OD-JS link on the way prison officers relate with people in custody and, in

particular, on their tendency to act with them in a depersonalized fashion. That is, we pos-

tulate the presence of a trickle process (Wo et al., 2019) whereby the dehumanizing treat-

ment prison officers perceive they receive from their organization (i.e., OD) is reproduced

on incarcerated persons (i.e., depersonalization) as a consequence of their decreased JS.

Indeed, JS has been shown to inversely relate to depersonalization practices in the prison

context (Lambert et al., 2015). The second aim of this article is thus to provide evidence for

a dehumanizing trickle effect in prison context and to assess the mediating role of JS in this

trickle process.

JS OF PRISON OFFICERS

Research on JS among prison officers began several decades ago and has grown expo-

nentially since then (e.g., Cullen et al., 1985). Much efforts in this domain have been

devoted to the identification of its antecedents. Among these, evidence was found for effects

from both personal characteristics and work environment factors (Lambert et al., 2002). At

the personal level, scholars have, for instance, shown that demographic factors such as age,

race, or gender impact prison officers’ JS (Bravo-Yáñez & Jiménez-Figueroa, 2011; Cullen

et al., 1985; Jiang et al., 2018). However, as important as they are, these personal character-

istics tend to play a lesser role in determining prison officers’ JS than factors of the work

environment (e.g., Griffin et al., 2010; Jiang et al., 2018; Lambert & Paoline, 2008). The

latter include “the factors or characteristics that comprise the overall work conditions and

situations for an employee, both tangible and intangible” (Lambert et al., 2002, p. 125).

Because of their prevalent effects and because, contrary to personal characteristics, these

can be acted upon, we focus, in this article, on work environment factors that affect JS.