Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

With a consistent increase of juvenile criminal recidivism, restorative justice tends to emerge as a new paradigm in juvenile justice reform for preventing juvenile criminal recidivism and improving juvenile delinquency treatment. Restorative justice emphasises re-socialisation at the community, shifting from existing facility-centered, public-centered juvenile justice to local community centered, public-private cooperated rehabilitation to juvenile offenders. Thus, it is needed to change the function of juvenile reformatory schools and to assign appropriate profession. In Korea, social workers have newly assigned to juvenile reformatory school with introduction of restorative justice to Juvenile in 2010. This study aims to analyse the characteristics of the work environment and resilience of social workers in juvenile reformatory schools and to identify influencing factors on their job satisfaction and organisational commitment. For this purpose, data were collected by a survey with all 72 social workers atjuvenile reformatory schools nationwide, and for the analysis, hierarchical regression was applied. As a result of the analysis, as for work environment factor, organisational work environment had significant effects on job satisfaction and organisational commitment of social workers but role work environment did not have any significant impacts on them. As for resilience, the more resilient of social workers, the higher job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Based on the findings of study, suggestions are discussed for organisational environment and policy implications in order to improve job satisfaction and organisational performance of social worker in the correctional area.
Keywords: Juvenile Reformatory Schools, Job Satisfaction, Organisational Commitment, Resilience, Social Worker, Work Environment