The opinion of prison-service professionals in Andalucia regarding "Respect Departments"

Abstract

Relatively few studies have focused on the group of professionals who work in the Respect Departments, which are internal units within the prison. Our aim was to understand the opinion of prison professionals in relation to these modules, and, in particular, to identify if there was any relationship between these opinions and the professional group to which they belonged, including prison officers, professionals such as psychologists, psychiatrists, educators, and other members of the technical and management teams. This study used the descriptive method, developing our own questionnaire titled "Questionnaire for Professionals on the Respect Departments", which was tested for reliability using Cronbach’s alpha (.766) whilst validity of its main components was analyzed, which explained 61.102% of the variance. A sample of 315 subjects from the eight Andalusian provinces of the three sectors participated in the study. Contingency analysis was applied and the results revealed that the Respect Departments were viewed differently both as an educative tool and in general, depending on the group to which the prison staff belonged.