Brief Organizational Justice in Corrections Settings
Travis Reginal, Jesse Jannetta
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Organizational justice is a framework for understanding an employee’s perception of fairness in their workplace and an important component of correctional staff’s workplace experiences. Organizational justice includes fairness in processes (procedural justice), outcomes (distributive justice), and treatment (interactional justice). Research suggests correctional officers’ perceptions of organizational justice—particularly procedural justice—are related to other attitudes and competencies, such as their commitment to their organization and the extent to which they understand and agree with its goals. These attitudes are important for reforming systems and changing organizational cultures in support of such reforms. Creating a humane prison environment requires correctional staff who treat people who are incarcerated in a procedurally just manner, but this can be difficult if those staff perceive they are not treated fairly by the system. This brief is part of a larger research agenda for the Prison Research and Innovation Initiative—a five-year effort to leverage research and evidence to shine a much-needed light on prison conditions and pilot strategies to promote the well-being of people who live and work behind bars.

Research Areas Crime, justice, and safety
Tags Corrections Prisons Incarceration
Policy Centers Justice Policy Center
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