Journal of Criminal Justice, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 213–226, 1998 Copyright © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0047-2352/98 $19.00 + .00 PII S0047-2352(97)00079-2 213 JOB ATTITUDES AMONG HIGHER-CUSTODY STATE PRISON MANAGEMENT PERSONNEL: A CROSS-SECTIONAL COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT Michael D. Reisig School of Criminal Justice Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1118 Nicholas P. Lovrich Division of Governmental Studies and Services Department of Political Science Washington State University Pullman, Washington 99164-4880 ABSTRACT Research on workplace attitudes among corrections personnel has focused almost exclusively on front-line officers and has largely overlooked managerial personnel. The study reported here sought to address this void in the literature by collecting data from a sample of supervisory personnel and admin- istrative staff employed in eleven adult male, higher-custody state prisons located throughout the United States. The researchers found significant differences between prison personnel employed in facilities that practiced different managerial approaches. In particular, prison personnel employed in facilities where managerial practices were guided by either highly rigid and formalized administrative elements or strict responsibility-oriented features experienced lower levels of satisfaction with work and higher levels of role strain than their counterparts employed by prisons that practiced more balanced, middle ground managerial approaches. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd INTRODUCTION The last two decades have been marked by a proliferation of research that has focused on the determinants of workplace attitudes among prison personnel. This attention has been warranted given that front-line officers, when compared to other occupational categories, have reported low levels of job satisfaction (Cullen et al., 1990). 1 A definitive understanding of the im- pact of low levels of satisfaction among prison practitioners has not been established; however,