Occupational stress among sex offender treatment managers

Occupational stressors were identified through qualitative interviews with sex offender treatment managers (N = 21) serving within HM prisons in England and Wales. Multidimensional scaling techniques revealed three distinctive stressor foci: intrinsic job factors; other people; personal. The pattern of stressor experience was related to length of time serving as a treatment manager, moving from inner to outward emphasis. The least experienced managers were more concerned about aspects of personal safety, those moderately experienced expressed greatest concern about the quality and consequences of their supervision and the most experienced were exercised by policy related issues. Distress, as measured by GHQ(12) was not statistically significantly related to levels of subjectively reported stress. The paper concludes by discussing implications for intervention.