Psychosocial climate and individual characteristics of prisoners and prison officers in penal institutions in Croatia: multi-method approach

The project’s main goal is to investigate the psychosocial climate in penal institutions in the Republic of Croatia, compare the psychosocial climate in the Croatian penal institutions to those from other countries, and contrast prisoners’ and prison officers’ perceptions of the psychosocial climate. An additional goal is to examine the relative contribution of the perception of the psychosocial climate and individual characteristics of prisoners to their sentence serving, criminal career and relationship with significant others. The research will be conducted on a convenient sample of prisoners (N ≈ 800) and prison officers (N ≈ 800) in all penal institutions of the Republic of Croatia (7 penitentiaries and 14 prisons), the Diagnostic Centre and the Training Centre. The multi-method approach will be employed – self-assessment (survey), prisoners’ assessment by treatment officers, and documentation analysis (during the first two years of the project), as well as repeated data collection on prisoners’ behaviour while serving their sentence (during the third and fourth year of the project). This project is expected to contribute to clarifying the relationship between prisoners’ individual differences and the perception of the psychosocial climate and behaviour in an institutional context by employing comprehensive analysis and a multi-method approach to data collection. Moreover, project results are expected to contribute to further development of the criminogenic risk and need assessment tools. Finally, it is anticipated that results collected from prison officers related to their perception of psychosocial climate, stress and coping, and the engagement with prisoners will contribute to the creation of guidelines for strengthening the capacity and empowerment of prison officers in their work and relationship with prisoners, as well as the creation of guidelines for prison programs and politics. Team members: Ines Sučić, Anja Wertag, Renata Glavak Tkalić, Vicko Ćudina, Bruno Škovrlj, Katarina Sokić, Janko Međedović and Ivana Ivanec.