Occupational burnout amongst youth justice officers in England

Zempi, I ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1719-8573, 2025. Occupational burnout amongst youth justice officers in England. Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health. ISSN 1555-5240

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Abstract

The evolution of the youth justice in England and Wales and its more recent developments present unique challenges for youth justice officers. However, little is known about the experiences of occupational burnout amongst youth justice officers in the UK. The present study aims to fill this gap in the literature using individual, semi-structured interviews with 35 youth justice officers working in the youth justice service located in a geographical region of England. The findings reflect the three dimensions of occupational burnout in terms of emotional exhaustion (feeling emotional drained and fatigued from work); depersonalisation (treating others in an impersonal manner); sense of reduced accomplishment (feeling ineffective in the workplace). Participants discussed how burnout affected their relationship with children who come into contact with the system and their colleagues, as well as the strategies they used to manage burnout. To this end, some participants reported contemplating leaving the service for a new occupation, which would have implications for staff turnover. It will be concluded that burnout has significant costs to staff, children, YJS and society at large.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health
Creators:	Zempi, I.
Publisher:	Routledge
Date:	30 April 2025
ISSN:	1555-5240
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1080/15555240.2025.2493193 DOI 2425842 Other
Rights:	© 2025 the author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Melissa Cornwell
Date Added:	15 Apr 2025 13:25
Last Modified:	30 Apr 2025 16:05
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53414

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