O opressor que também é oprimido: estressores psicossociais e o seu efeito preditor na satisfação no trabalho do agente responsável pela custódia do preso em Minas Gerais

Abstract

In Brazil and worldwide, stress at work has been identified as one of the main health problems in the context of work, reflecting on people, the organization and the government itself. In addition, it is recognized that there are professions that demonstrate a higher incidence of their manifestation, such as the individual responsible for the custody of prisoners. International studies have shown that the prison guard profession is among the most stressful professions in the world and, despite the scarcity of national studies on the subject, this reality is certainly present in our country. Specifically in Brazil, the increase in the prison population observed in recent decades, as well as the reiteration of news related to violence, riots and human degradation in prisons, indicate the need to look at the work context of these professionals, since the organizational results they are also linked to the health condition of their workers. In addition, job satisfaction is an important contributing element to unveil this reality, as job satisfaction has already been directly associated with worker health and organizational performance, in addition to being inversely associated with stress. Thus, the main objective of this study was to identify the stressors psychosocial sources perceived by those responsible for the custody of prisoners and their predictive effect on job satisfaction for these people. The research is of a quantitative-descriptive nature and, for this purpose, two scales were applied, already tested in studies that support the validity of the constructs, containing responses in the Likert format, which relate to seven stressors and five dimensions of job satisfaction. A sociodemographic questionnaire developed in this research was also applied. The sample consisted of 206 individuals who worked in the penitentiary system of Minas Gerais and divided into two large groups: the Penitentiary Security Agents (ASP), linked to the common or traditional system (composed of penitentiaries, prisons, among others), and the Security inspectors (IS) linked to the methodology of the Association of Protection and Assistance to Convicts (APAC). The division of participants into groups also provided a comparison between these two prison models. After analyzing the results, it was found that there is a perception of stressors by the participants, and it is certain that this perception was demonstrated with greater intensity among the ASP. In addition, education, salary, working time in the prison system, number of prisoners in custody and number of servants were sociodemographic elements that also showed a positive correlation with the perception of stressors. It was also verified the existence of a negative correlation between various stressors and the job satisfaction of these subjects, being certain that the hierarchical regression identified that all dimensions of job satisfaction suffer variations explained by the stressors, and the intensity of this variation depends both on the work environment in which this subject is immersed, as well as the stressors perceived by him. Considerations, limits and contributions of the research are presented in each of the two articles that make up this work.