Critical Literature Review on Prison Social Work - Paper Example

The research question was built based on various arguments and analysis in various research papers and articles. To make the argument stronger, several journal articles were considered while coming up with the literature review.

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Prison social work has been offered from a century, and its advancements were through the efforts of Kenneth Pray. Despite his efforts, social work has assumed its stance in prisons. Maybe due to the different institution values (Pray, 1943). However, the increased population in prisons has created a need to create a unique set of skills that social workers bring to prisons.

In most prisons, the assessment of inmates involves several tests and interviews with a social worker to determine any possible chronic or psychological conditions. During this time, the social workers determine the prisoners eligibility to have access to treatment (Travis et al., 2001).

Based on the data, different treatment plans and interventions are employed considering the inmates needs. This may include counseling or being involved in special treatment.

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) provides the importance of providing equity and equality to inmates. NASW challenges prison social workers to carry out the following;

1. Provide inmates with similar medical health care services, nutrition, treatment and medication.

2. Identify educational opportunities that can assist inmates.

3. Provide social work leadership skill to the inmates (NASW, 2012).

Prison social workers are often faced with various challenges. Nowadays, prisons no longer associate with rehabilitation but instead, they focus on offering punishment (Gibelman, 1995). With such an environment, it is difficult to protect individual inmates rights. Social workers competence performance complicates itself by the increasing population of inmates with special needs. In a prison environment defined by various challenges, there are environmental factors that would motivate or demotivate a prison worker from continuing to work or requesting to find another workplace. Despite a history of the prison system, social workers are currently assigned to prisons. Although its values have a secondary role to inmates, the judicial enforcement has created a need for unique skills that a prison social worker needs to possess. This paper will attempt to analyze a few of these problems, chosen because of their great importance in a prison system.

Statement of the problem

The question of this research study is whether the relationship among colleague workers in prisons and the working conditions motivate and increase their chances to keep working at the prison, using the case study of Texas prison, Florida prison, and Montana prison.

Methodology

To answer and gather evidence for the research question, the research would thereby use a qualitative method in which primary sources of data and information will be gathered. Also, the research approach is inductive reasoning whereby observations and questionnaires will be used to come up with the hypothesis. The inductive reasoning approach is defined as a research approach where the theory is developed by observation and other forms of data collection procedures (Feeney and Heit, 2007). From this definition, I could say that it is the most suitable approach to using in this research. As the literature review from the chosen articles focuses more on the effects of being a prison social worker, it is still needed to improve how the relationship between the prison worker and inmates would affect the motivation of the workers and their intention to keep working or contribute to the prison organization. Also, the methodology choice, which was survey consisted of the approach of the research.

My approach to delivering the proposal had three different elements;

1. A literature review of the prisons social care.

2. Research work including surveys on the current working environment and practices in prisons.

3. Concluding the findings.

Ethics

Before the execution and data gathering, this research paper deemed to comply with the procedures of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Furthermore, the research is committed to state the truth based on real findings and from trustworthy sources. Besides this commitment, this paper also acknowledges the respondents personal rights and information. As to this reason, all the information as to who took the survey and what positions they hold at the prisons are kept confidential.

Data collection

Three surveys which consist of a total of ten questions was sent to three different prisons located in the United States. In each prison, ten random prison worker were selected to answer the questions related to their working conditions and the effects it had on their motivation as a prison worker and their intention to keep on working at the prison organization. The total expected sample size was thirty prison workers. The three prisons chosen to send the surveys were Texas prison, Florida prison, and Montana prison. These prisons are located in different states. It was expected that since the period in which the surveys were sent to each prison to the date on which all the surveys were received back was a duration of two weeks.

All the surveys were developed in a uniform platform and sent to each prison via email. The reason for having a consistent platform for the survey was to develop some form of convenience that is familiar with the prison workers than any other type of survey. Furthermore, using email to send the survey was also a convenient way for the respondent and researcher to give answers, collect and analyze data thereby saving more time and effort.

The sample questions sent to the thirty prison workers are as below.

1. What is your age?

2. Are you male or female?

3. What is your position as a prison worker?

4. In your opinion, what situation brings a friendly working environment?

5. Have you ever had a conflict (s) with and inmate or a fellow prison worker? (Yes or No).

6. If yes, does it makes you demotivated? (Yes or No).

7. If you have a positive relationship with the inmates or you colleagues, will you leave the prison for any reason? (Yes or No).

8. Do you find it motivating to work in an environment with convicted inmates? (Yes or No).

9. What changes would you wish to be made to improve your working environment?

10. If any, how would they benefit you?

Data Analysis

After a period of two weeks when the surveys were received back, the data would then be analyzed. From the data received, 61% of the respondents were aged 35 and above, the remaining 39% formed the younger group of below 35 years old. Furthermore, 78 percent of the prison workers were prison wardens while the other 22 percent were subordinate workers who were both office attendants and messengers.

Concerning the requirements of a working environment that are friendly, there was an opinion tie between having a balanced relationship with the professional and personal life and a good relationship with other employees. While 40 percent agreed that an excellent prison environment created a conducive working environment, 12 percent of the responded indicated that a better salary was most important.

Concerning the question about whether respondents would work with colleagues who they had previously had a conflict before, 82 percent of them indicated that they are still working with that co-worker. 78 percent of the respondents stated that it would make them demotivated.

When being asked whether to keep on working at the prison or to relocate, 70 percent of the respondent replied that they would consider relocating to a new workplace whereas 10 percent stated that they would not leave the prison for any reason.

Relating to the experience they had with other colleagues workers, 65 percent of the respondents claimed that they had had the experience before while 35 percent had not had a bad relationship with other members. With the 65 percent, 32 percent of them indicated that they had not done anything to solve the issue, but only 20 percent chose to relocate to a new station due to conflict.

Critical Evaluation

The report had great importance in creating the survey questions that focused on answering the research objectives. The choice of prisons would give a broader view of the problems. Instead of concentrating on a specific prison, different prisons would help to examine whether the problem was similar for different prisons. As expected, there should have been a positive relationship among colleague workers. However, the survey answers showed that their intention to keep working at the prison was not dependent only on their relationship with other colleagues.

On the other hand, there were some limitations that the research faced. The first limitation was the respondents number. It was expected that 50 percent or more would be received back for analysis, but only 41 percent was received.

Secondly, the survey was built in English, which was not convenient for other respondents especially those who worked as subordinate staff despite English being a common language.

Conclusion

To conclude, the purpose of this research, which explores the challenges that social prison works undergo as social workers. Such challenges include bad co-worker relationships, demotivation and a poor working environment in the prisons. However, a good co-worker relationship and their intention to keep working as a social worker have not been proved. As this paper reveals from the data collected, the intention of prison social workers to keep working at the prison did not only depend on their working relationships but with other many factors and reasons. These reasons could be working environment, nature of the position or even salaries.

Also, in their daily lives, prison social workers encounter the impacts of their relationships with mentally ill inmates. With the knowledge on mental illness, they develop appropriate treatment methods for the period that the inmate is convicted. To minimize these challenges, prison social workers are often called upon conduct parent support groups and inmate educational programs. All these are aimed to support the relationship among inmates, prison workers, and children whose parents are incarcerated.References

Feeney, A. and Heit, E. (2007). Inductive reasoning: experimental, development and computational approaches. Cambridge University Press.

National Association of Social Workers. (2012). Social work speaks: NASW policy statements, 20122014. Washington, DC: NASW Press.

Travis, J., Solomon, A. L., & Waul, M. (2001). From prison to home: The dimensions and consequences of prisoner reentry. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

Gibelman, M. (1995). What social workers do. Washington, DC: NASW Press.

Pray, K. L. (1943). Social work in the prison program. Fed. Probation, 7(4), 37.

Reamer, F. G. (2004). Social work and criminal justice: The uneasy alliance. Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work, 23(12), 213231.