Effective Probation Strategies to Respond to Signals of Poor Progress on Community Supervision
With over 4 million adults under community supervision and an average of 30% that do not fare well, an unanswered question is which strategies reduce the likelihood of technical, absconding, and new arrest violations during the early phase of supervision. Utilizing data on 32,335 moderate to high-supervised individuals on supervision in North Carolina, the study found that success during the first 6 months is due to probation officers’ use of incentives to promote positive behavior and swift community-based consequences to address negative behavior, prioritizing treatment services or cognitive programs, increasing monitoring requirements, and using skill-building worksheets to increase engagement and build rapport. Officer actions are more important than individual characteristics, and can promote success for those that are under the age of 31, have more complex needs, and are identified as at-risk for violating supervision. Future studies should explore these concepts more directly regarding their relationship with recidivism.
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The relationship between caseload size (i.e., number of individuals being supervised per officer) and supervision outcomes has been a long-standing issue. Taxman (2002) reports that caseload size studies tend to demonstrate a small effect on recidivism. Jalbert et al. (2010) report that reduced caseloads are only effective at reducing general recidivism; however, reduced caseload size may increase technical violations or have no effect at all (Jalbert et al., 2010, 2011; Jalbert & Rhodes, 2012). In the Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) model, which emphasizes close monitoring, frequent drug testing, and swift, certain, and fair sanctioning, and smaller caseloads, these supervision features did not reduce technical violations or recidivism compared with probation as usual (Lattimore et al., 2016). Intensive supervision programs appear to exacerbate negative outcomes by providing opportunities to observe noncompliant behaviors (see Taxman et al., 2020) but may reduce recidivism if they (1) provide more treatment to higher-risk individuals, (2) employ parole officers using a balanced law enforcement/social casework orientation, and (3) are implemented in supportive organizational environments (Paparozzi & Gendreau, 2005; Taxman, 2008; Taxman et al., 2020). Furthermore, treatment-oriented responses for noncompliance, particularly for individuals with substance use disorders, improve outcomes (Boman et al., 2019). In general, reduced caseload sizes may facilitate a better working relationship between the officer and the person on supervision that has been shown to be effective in reducing recidivism (Blasko et al., 2021).
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The findings from this study illustrate that the type of conditions (controls versus services/programs) affect the likelihood of poor outcomes when individuals have multiple high needs and social determinants of health (i.e., substance abuse, housing, or transportation). Officer activities and tools that can reduce negative outcomes are services used with delegated authority (graduated responses), sanctions, and incentives and are related to officer skill-building strategies. Despite having one of the largest impacts on reducing violations, incentives were used infrequently by officers. Incentives are a key tool to achieve positive outcomes, particularly the use of incentives more frequently than sanctions and incentives that are offered early in the supervision processes (Mowen et al., 2018; Sloas et al., 2019), which is the key time period in this study. Officers should use incentives as a means to encourage and support compliance that can lead to other positive supervision outcomes. In addition, the findings suggest that agencies should incorporate using workbook activities that are built on cognitive behavioral techniques (any of the worksheets included in the Carey Guides) for their officers, which may enhance the positive effects of using incentives and graduated sanctions with programming. Ultimately, officers should respond to compliance and/or noncompliance behaviors during the early phase of supervision to enhance early positive outcomes as compared with ignoring these noncompliant events.
