Occupational Tedium among Prison Officers

Abstract

This study describes sources of occupational stress in the prison officer's job and investigates their relationships with tedium—defined as a general experience of physical, emotional, and attitudinal exhaustion. Custodial personnel from four maximum security Israeli prisons participated in the study (N = 201). The measured sources of stress incude role conflicts of several types, fear and danger, role overload, role ambiguity, job scope, working conditions, and several types of social support. The variables making the largest unique contributions to the variance in tedium are role overload, management support, and societal support. The relationships between job tenure, sources of stress, and tedium are also explored, and the practical implications of the findings are discussed.