Parolee–Parole Officer Rapport: Does It Impact Recidivism (original) (raw)
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Exploring the protective role of significant interpersonal relationships in reducing recidivism
2012
Objectives: The overarching aim of this thesis is to understand and explore the impact that positive interpersonal relationships have on reducing re-offending behaviour. This thesis addresses this aim via three pieces of work. A systematic review which explores the impact of prison visits on wellbeing, rule-breaking behaviour in prison and recidivism; a qualitative study of prisoners and their partners' experience through the prison sentence and the impact on offending behaviour; and a critique of a popular psychometric tool, the Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ), used to measure adult attachment. Method: A systematic review was conducted using online resources. Ten studies met the inclusion criteria. Studies were reviewed using a standardised quality assessment tool. The research study involved interviewing four couples, in relation to the study's areas of interest. The data was then analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Evaluation of the psychometric tool was based on the available literature. Results: In the systematic review there was considerable variation in study quality, methods used, and findings. Studies consistently found generally positive effects of prisoners receiving visits. There was good evidence that prison visits reduced depressive symptoms. However, impact on prison rule-breaking behaviour suggested a negative relationship. A high quality study identified that visits reduced rates of recidivism. In the research study the analysis of the stories resulted in the emergence of four main themes to explain the couples' experience, the maintenance of the relationship and the impact on offending; having a special connection, challenges and threats, reciprocal behaviours and maintaining a belief in the future. The outcome of the evaluation of the RSQ suggests that with reservations it is effective tool to use in research. Conclusions: The findings suggest a number of ways in which prisoners' relationships influence desistance and has practical implications for supporting couples to maintain their relationships in the future. It also provides suggestions for future research in this area.
Firm, fair, and caring officer-offender relationships protect against supervision failure.
A growing body of research suggests that high quality dual role relationships between community corrections officers and offenders reduce risk of recidivism. This study assesses whether this finding generalizes from offenders with mental illness to their relatively healthy counterparts. More importantly, this study tests the possibility that this finding is spurious, reflecting the influence of pre-existing offender characteristics more than a promising principle of practice. In this study of 109 parolees without mental illness, the authors found that (a) firm, fair, and caring relationships protect against rearrest, and (b) do so even after accounting for offenders' pre-existing personality traits and risk for recidivism. These findings are consistent with the theoretical notion that good dual role relationships are an essential element of core correctional practice, even (or particularly) for difficult or high risk offenders.
Social bonds and change during incarceration: testing a missing link in the reentry research
International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology, 2011
Research examining prisoner reentry has demonstrated negative impacts of incarceration on social bonds. However, this research is limited in two ways. First, it generally examines outcomes after release, paying less attention to processes occurring in prison. Second, this work tends to examine "incarceration" as a whole, regarding prisons as homogenous. This study uses data from an experiment in which offenders were randomly assigned to incarceration at one of two prisons polarized across a number of structural characteristics that research suggests affect social bonds (a traditional prison vs. a correctional boot camp). Groups were compared with respect to commitment, belief, attachment, and in terms of changes among their relationships during incarceration. The data showed that the boot camp improved prosocial beliefs, but few differences emerged in terms of commitment and attachment. Similarly, the data showed few differences in attachment regardless of the prosocial or...
Rethinking Recidivism: A Communication Approach to Prisoner Reentry
Journal of Applied Social Science, 2013
Prisoner reentry is one of the main criminal justice challenges confronting the United States, especially as the costs of recidivism and incarceration take increasing tolls on city and state budgets, and the effects of criminal activity are felt by families and local communities. Our goal in this article is to develop an alternative approach to prisoner reentry. Our contention is that many reentry efforts focus mainly on the visible effects of recidivism (e.g., parole violations, criminal behavior, and treatment compliance) but do not get at the underlying causes that lead to recidivism in the first place. While traditional methods of surveillance and control focus on the observable problems of recidivism, we argue that the underlying cause is a communication breakdown of being cut off from networks and meaningful relationships that provide the necessary social capital needed for successful reintegration. Therefore, we propose reframing prisoner reentry from a communication perspective, and developing subsequent communication solutions. We suggest that mentoring is one such communication solution, and we present a case study of a successful reentry mentoring program. Our case study uses a mixed research methodology, including quantitative data from a third-party assessment and qualitative data from in-depth interviews. Our key conclusions are that mentoring provides important communication links to enable coordinated service delivery for ex-prisoners, and that mentoring is a valuable conversational resource to help socially construct a favorable postrelease environment for successful reentry. Our target audience are those interested in prisoner reentry and reforming the overall criminal justice system.
The Reentry Process: How Parolees Adjust to Release from Prison
Fathering: A Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice about Men as Fathers, 2005
We explored the reentry process by interviewing 51 parolees three times over a period of three months after their release from prison. In addition, we interviewed 19 parole officers and tracked each parolee for six months after release. Ten of the 51 parolees were reincarcerated within six months after their release from prison. Family support, being married or having a partner, living with a family member, and being a parent were not associated with parole adjustment or with the likelihood of returning to prison. Variables associated with not being reincarcerated were number of close relationships within the family network, the quality of the parent-child relationship, being employed, and having stable housing. Reincarceration was associated with socializing with friends four or more times per week, the number of conflicted relationships in the family network, having family members who had been on probation or in jail, and the parolee's perceived difficulty in staying off drugs. These findings suggest that the overall network of family relationships is important in helping to make the transition from prison to the community.
Returning Home on Parole: Former Prisoners' Experiences in Illinois, Ohio, and Texas
PsycEXTRA Dataset
Parolees reported positive relationships with their parole officers and most found their POs helpful with transition. At the same time, parolees received relatively little tangible assistance finding a job or drug treatment program. • Parole supervision was associated with increased employment and reduced substance use among former prisoners. • Parole supervision had almost no impact on self-reported crime or rearrest, but increased the likelihood of reincarcerationmostly due to technical violations. • Younger property offenders with no prior revocations benefited more from parole supervision than older parolees with prior failures on parole. Using longitudinal data from 740 former prisoners interviewed for the Urban Institute's study Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry, this brief examines postrelease supervision experiences in Illinois, Ohio, and Texas from 2002 through 2005. This analysis was funded by the generous support of the JEHT Foundation. Any opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Urban Institute, its board, or its sponsors.
Justice Quarterly, 2016
We analyzed data collected for a large multi-site evaluation of 12 prisoner reentry programs in 12 states to examine the impact of pre-release services on time to rearrest and number of rearrests up to 56 months post-release for male offenders. A two-stage matching quasi-experimental design was used to define the comparison groups and multivariate models were used to examine the relationships among service and program receipt and recidivism. Participation in the reentry program was associated with longer time to arrest and fewer arrests after release. However, the specific services delivered as part of the program showed modest or inconsistent impacts on recidivism. Services that focused on individual change were more beneficial than services that focused on practical skills and needs. Practitioners should consider careful sequencing of program and service delivery in prison, linking in-prison services to post-release assistance, and evaluating all services and programs for fidelity and effectiveness.