Abstract:

Lifelong learning to find a job is a very important factor in the process of reintegration of offenders after serving a prison sentence and has a significant impact on reducing recidivism. The organization of prison aftercare, which includes a set of activities aimed at the integration of former prisoners into society, is a complex task that requires a multidisciplinary approach. A number of scientific studies have been conducted on the importance of employing this vulnerable group, but insufficient attention is paid to the attitudes of employers and other stakeholders who decide on their employment. Namely, recent research shows that the attitudes of relevant people in the process of getting a job represent one of the key roles in the employability of former prisoners. The aim of this paper is to gain insight into the attitudes of employers on the employment of former prisoners in the Republic of Croatia. The survey was conducted with an online questionnaire on a purposive sample of 106 employers in the period from March to April 2020. A questionnaire designed for this research consists of 4 sections: sociodemographic variables, employers' habits, employers' attitudes towards the employment of former prisoners and employers' perceptions - perception of self-risk, perception of social danger, perception of personal responsibility and perception of damaged professional reputation. The data were analyzed using The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 27 by methods of Descriptive Date Analysis. To examine statistical relationship among the variables the Pearson correlation was calculated and to test differences between groups t-test was used. The results show a positive trend in the attitudes of employers towards the employment of former prisoners in such a way that more than half of the surveyed employers (56,6%) do not ask for a certificate of impunity when interviewing for a job, which implies that they do not care if the person was previously serving a prison sentence. In addition, there were no statistically significant differences in the attitudes of employers with regard to gained education level, newly acquired skills and work position. According to the results of this research, what worries employers when hiring former convicts is the disapproval of other colleagues at work and the feeling of guilt if a former prisoner turns out to be a bad worker. Such results offer a good potential for further research on this topic as well as for the development of structured prison aftercare programs in the Republic of Croatia that consider additional sensibilization of general population related to the issue of employment of former prisoners.

Keywords:

Former prisoners, employment, prison aftercare, offender rehabilitation.