<strong>social</strong> climate – Universität Innsbruck

Monitoring the social climate in prison

Monitoring the social climate in prison is becoming increasingly relevant internationally because studies show that prison climate influences not only the quality of prison life itself but also reoffending. Unlike many European countries that already conduct such measurements, there is no such monitoring in Austria. This project therefore aims to develop and implement the monitoring of the social climate in Austrian prisons. Thus, context-sensitive instruments for measuring the social climate are developed on the basis of focus groups with staff members and systematically tested in pretests. As part of the testing, the comprehensibility of the questionnaire will be examined through cognitive interviews with detainees. The survey will be based on the factor-analytically tested questionnaire from the SiGit project, but will be expanded, updated, and translated into the five most relevant languages in Austrian prisons. Using these instruments, a comprehensive survey on the social climate in prison from the perspective of detainees and staff will be conducted for the first time in five selected Austrian prisons, taking departmental levels into account. The results of the survey will be evaluated using methods of inferential statistics. In the course of the analysis, a validation of the questionnaire is carried out. The combination of the empirical data from the surveys with the prison's internal controlling data (from "cockpit") aims to identify correlations between prison climate assessments and objective indicators, which will form the basis for an application-oriented measurement of the prison climate after the duration of the project. Together with the Ministry of Justice a roadmap for future implementation of prison climate surveys will be developed. The results of the project will also be communicated to the correctional practice and the scientific community on several occasions, for example, by introducing the results in prison management conferences and in the education and training of prison guards, as well as through the publication of scientific articles.

The project is funded by the Austrian Security Research Programme KIRAS of the Austrian Ministry of Finance.