Criminal Justice Professionals' Attitudes Towards Offenders: Assessing the Link Between Global Orientations and Specific Attributions

The State Justice Statistics (SJS) Program is designed to maintain and enhance each state's capacity to address criminal justice issues through collection and analysis of data. The SJS Program provides support to each state to coordinate and conduct statistical activities within the state, conduct research to estimate impacts of legislative and policy changes, and serve as a liaison in assisting BJS to gather data from respondent agencies within their states.

Under this award, the New Mexico Statistical Analysis Center (NMSAC) will conduct a study on reentry initiatives in New Mexico corrections and the attitude of staff toward the offenders participating in these programs. The study will evaluate the Career Pathways (CP) program. The program is a reentry initiative designed to provide offenders in prison with the key job skills they will need to secure gainful employment upon release. In addition, the program targets some of the behaviors and attitudes that might pose barriers to employment for this population.

Findings will be provided to the Department of Corrections for review and to decide what changes are needed to improve the success of the program.

CA/NCF