Trust in Correctional Staff Increasing Criminal Desistance Intention with Sentence-Serving Time

Purpose While correctional staff are supposed to facilitate the criminal desistance of persons in custody, their effectiveness in this regard has not been clear. A notably unclear aspect of the helpfulness concerns the persons’ trust in correctional staff for their criminal desistance. If the trust is helpful, its benefits will increase with the person’s sentence serving time and young age, in line with social learning theory. Design To assess such helpfulness, this study surveyed 873 persons in custody across 21 correctional institutions in Hong Kong, China. Findings Results supported the hypotheses based on social learning theory. Accordingly, trust in correctional staff over the previous 2s had a positive effect on desistance intention in the year following discharge. Moreover, this effect increased with sentence-serving time and young age (younger than 21 years). Implications These results suggest that correctional staff can be an effective resource for persons seeking to learn how to desist from crime. Hence, promoting the staff as a trustworthy learning source is advisable. Originality The study identifies the specific age and sentence conditions under which trust in staff successfully predicts criminal desistance.