Differences in Perception of Self-legitimacy between Prison Officers and Specialized Workers in Slovenian Prisons

Recent studies on legitimacy in the prison environment have drawn attention to the importance of self-legitimacy of prison workers in their everyday performance of tasks in prison and establishing relationships with prisoners. This paper focuses on self-legitimacy of prison workers in Slovenian prisons, with the primary aim to identify factors that influence self-legitimacy of prison officers, specialized workers, and prison workers as a whole. Furthermore, factors that influence self-legitimacy of prison officers and specialized workers in prisons were compared in order to demonstrate the impact of characteristics of an individual group in prison on its members' perceptions of self legitimacy. Results from multiple regression analyses show that the perception of supervisors' procedural justice, relations with colleagues, audience legitimacy, subculture of the prison staff, satisfaction with salary, age, and education level are the best predictors of self-legitimacy of prison workers. Moreover, results of discriminant analysis showed statistically significant differences between prison officers and specialized workers in the presence of subculture of the prison staff and exposure to stress. These findings show that the perceptions of self-legitimacy vary in different groups of prison workers. The implications of these findings are discussed.