POP Center Responses Monitoring Offenders on Conditional Release Page 3
Varieties of Offender Monitoring
Community supervision has several goals. Practically, these types of sanctions provide alternatives to incarceration; this unburdens the system, especially when the individual has committed a minor crime or is a first-time offender. Conceptually, community supervision is a conditional form of release. Probation and parole are trials where the offender must demonstrate that they can be trusted to live freely. When they fail to meet the stipulations of their conditional release, they are incarcerated. This section of the guide discusses the different kinds of community supervision strategies that are used to monitor offenders on probation and parole. It is important for police to appreciate what tactics are used with what offenders, as well as what practices are the most effective.
Conditions of Supervision
The rules the offender must abide by can be highly varied. Community supervision can incorporate a number of different conditions, and these should vary according to the offender’s risks for reoffending. The court sometimes requires that particular conditions be part of a case plan; other times, community corrections officers tailor the supervision agreement for an offender, choosing from a number of possible rules and requirements.
Different conditions of community supervision point to different goals. The singular goal of supervisors is for the offending of their clients to cease; yet, how this goal is achieved varies, as there are different strategies for controlling offenders. Control may stem from internal or external sources, such as emotion management or threats of punishment; or, situational contingencies that link internal and external control together. This situational control is produced through two forms of pressure. Indirect pressure occurs when the supervising officer works with the objective of getting the offender to comply independently. Direct pressure occurs when the supervising officer works to ensure that environmental factors create incentives for the offender to avoid criminal behavior.
Figure 4. Targets of change with community supervised offenders
As such, there are different targets for change with community supervised offenders (see Figure 4). First, the general environment includes general threats of deterrence, such as the consequence of incarceration for misbehavior. Second, most often, offender supervisors aim to control the more immediate environment, such as by placing stringent restrictions on surroundings and activities (e.g., abstinence from drugs or alcohol). Third, rehabilitation aims to alter the cognitive processes of offenders. None of these three layers can stand alone in preventing recidivism; a quality supervision plan should include conditions that address all three factors, independently and in combination. Offenders must associate pro-social thoughts (C) with immediate situational triggers (B) that lead to the less visible threat of incarceration (A). Police play a crucial role in this supervision plan, helping offenders to identify and appreciate links between the environment, their reaction to it, and what consequences are likely to occur. Police officers’ frequent contact with offenders makes them excellent facilitators for training probationers and parolees to reassess their environments.
Each of these targets for change has different recommended strategies for reducing recidivism. Though new technologies have emerged, many of these community supervision practices have not changed much since they were established. While some conditions are necessary for public safety, others are generic and only loosely linked to weak criminological theory. Typical stipulations in an offender’s case plan include:
- Be of good conduct and obey all laws
- Comply with the orders of the court
- Obtain the supervising officer’s permission before relocating or leaving the state
- Meet with the supervising officer as scheduled
- Submit to reasonable searches of person and property
- Do not associate with any person having a criminal record
- Do not be in the presence of illegal substances or use alcohol in excess
- Do not be in possession of any weapon
- Abide by any other special conditions
Table 2 on page 18 provides an overview of some of the popular “add-ons” to the traditional components of offender monitoring. Supervision conditions that are tailored to the risks and needs of the individual offender show the greatest promise of reducing recidivism; these programs involve graded sanctions, an emphasis on individual change, and reintegrative treatment. Some community corrections conditions were consistently shown to be counterproductive; programs that are generically applied despite the individual’s risks, or heightened control through surveillance or behavior restrictions, all failed to reduce recidivism. Intensive supervision often leads to increases in technical violations, a huge contribution to the failure of community supervision.4, 5
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Table 2. Components of Traditional Probation and Parole | ||||
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| Component | Definition | Research Findings |
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| Alternative sentencing courts | Problem-solving adjudication, aimed at changing offender behavior; includes comprehensive, coordinated supervision | Strong research findings, especially when courts include graduated sanctions |
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| Boot camps | Military-based regimen combining physical exercise and hard manual labor; often composed of volunteer offenders | Weak empirical support; some programs associated with increased recidivism |
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| Community service | A symbolic form of victim restitution, involves court-ordered unpaid work to public service or a charitable organization | Mixed evaluation outcomes; positive results when combined with short detention or treatment |
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| Day reporting centers | An effort to integrate control with treatment, offenders frequently check in with their officer and programs | Minimal positive support; sanctions may overemphasize control rather than change |
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| Fines / restitution | Aims to quantify victim harm, requiring offenders to compensate for damage done; matched to ability to pay | Few research findings to support use beyond necessary reimbursement |
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| Home detention | Employed as pretrial detainment or prerelease furlough; may be used with electronic monitoring to verify presence | Moderate empirical support; although it increases control, it may be a form of net widening |
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| Residential treatment centers | Often referred to as "halfway houses;" facilities that attempt to centrally locate many community corrections resources | Minimal evaluations support generic use; may be useful if problem-specific or reintegrative |
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| Shock incarceration | Short period of incapacitation, followed by community supervision, designed to "shock" the offender into desisting | Moderate research support, when brief detention is combined with community treatment |
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| Treatment mandate | Requiring an offender to participate in a program; may include individualized use or generic application | Mixed research findings; success of treatment depends on program type and offender motivation |
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| Work release | Aim to bridge offenders between incarceration and community life; build social skills, including obtaining work | Moderate to strong support, when the goal is reentry rather than solely securing employment |
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Best Practices in Offender Supervision
Though buzzwords such as “evidence-based” and “best practices” may sometimes seem like empty rhetoric, true research-driven approaches can increase public safety. Agencies that desire to provide the best public service should be well versed in the policing research that identifies the supervision strategies most and least effective in combating crime. While there are dozens of strategies for reducing recidivism among probationers and parolees, the majority fall into one of two categories: rehabilitation or control (see Table 3 on page 19). Both supervision approaches have techniques that work to prevent crime—some that do not change offender behavior and others that cause more crime.
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Table 3. Two Models of Offender Community Supervision | ||||
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| Rehabilitation | Control |
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| Primary objective | To change or limit the influence of internal factors that cause the individual to commit crime | To change or limit the influence of external factors that cause the individual to commit crime |
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| Methods | Counseling, medication, guided rehearsal, behavior modification | Environmental crime prevention, drug testing, electronic monitoring, threat of arrest / incarceration |
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| Indicator of success | A reduction in criminogenic risk | A reduction in offending |
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| Target population | Offenders with antisocial beliefs, substance abusers, mentally ill | Repeat offenders, individuals exposed to environmental triggers (e.g., unstructured leisure time) |
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| What works | Principles of effective intervention (risk, need, responsivity) | Graduated sanctions, directed deterrence |
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| What doesn't work | Nondirective treatment (generic classes, talking cures), subcultural approaches | Punishing smarter, zero tolerance |
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| Role of courts | Use leverage to mandate necessary treatment and services | Follow through on threats of incarceration for failure to comply with supervision conditions |
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| Role of corrections | Create a case plan specifically tailored to the individual needs of the offender | Revise the case plan to reduce or strengthen external controls based on the offender's progress |
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| Role of police | Service referral, encourage prosocial behavior, reward reform, use graduated freedoms | Recruit offender handlers, create place managers, strengthen target guardians, use graduated sanctions |
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Rehabilitation
Despite a long period when correctional policy maintained that offender treatment was a wasted effort, research now demonstrates the opposite. With the use of quality risk and needs assessments, the development of effective correctional interventions,6 and a massive knowledge base of what works to prevent recidivism, offender treatment has returned to the mainstream. Crime prevention works when punishments and control are used in the background while the primary focus is individualized treatment.7 Hundreds of empirical studies have shown that there are several principles that reduce reoffending (see Table 4 on pages 20–21).8 Evaluations of community supervision programs demonstrate that the use of these principles can produce substantial reductions in reoffending.9
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Table 4. Principles of Successful Supervision | |||||||
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| Principle | Definition | Example |
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| 1. Define success as recidivism reduction and measure performance | Agencies must aim to work beyond public safety, with a more narrow goal of reducing recidivism; definitive benchmarks for measuring such must be provided | Officers work with the intention of minimizing each individual's criminal activity; offenders are reassessed systematically to determine whether that goal is being addressed / met |
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| 2. Tailor conditions of supervision | Conditions of release ought to be relevant to the individual offender, and should be focused on those factors that are thought to contribute to criminal behavior | Offenders should undergo substance abuse treatment only when their drug or alcohol use is clearly linked to their participation in criminal activity |
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| 3. Focus resources on moderate- and high-risk offenders | Intensive interventions targeted at low-risk individuals may increase their offending; scarce resources should be provided to those with the greatest gains to be made | The assessment of an individual's risk of reoffending will determine how much control they are subjected to and how much treatment they are afforded |
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| 4. Frontload supervision resources | The period immediately following release poses the greatest risk for recidivism and offender needs; resources should be concentrated in the first weeks of supervision | Community agencies begin case planning for offenders entering community supervision before official release, and require more meetings in the first month of supervision |
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| 5. Implement earned discharge | Lower risk offenders can earn an end to their supervision (or a reduction in the number or strictness of guidelines) by complying with stipulations or demonstrating positive change | A non-violent offender may reduce the number of desk visits with his supervising officer from one per week to one per month following ninety days of model behavior |
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| 6. Implement place-based supervision | Offenders should be supervised in the communities in which they live; this will provide acceess to and understanding of the individual's surroundings and relationships | Officers have geographic-based caseloads, so that resources are allocated by place; the agent becomes familiar with the offender's actual environment, beyond what a desk visit provides |
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| 7. Engage partners to explain intervention capacities | Additional community organizations should be incorporated into offender treatment, particularly given the multiple needs of community supervised offenders | Probation agencies may solicit partnerships with outlets for group therapy and prosocial ties, or organizations that can aid in housing, employment, or health assistance |
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| 8. Assess criminogenic risk and need factors | Agencies ought to use a reliable assessment to identify the risk and need factors that are associated with the offender's criminal behavior; these findings create a case plan | On intake, an officer employs a standardized assessment, making note of those factors that place the offender at high risk for recidivating; the officer works to reduce those specific needs |
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| 9. Develop and implement supervision case plans that balance surveillance and treatment | The supervision of offenders in the community should incorporate mechanisms of control, as well as outlets for treatment, aimed at monitoring and changing the offender | An offender is required to undergo one home visit and one desk visit per week, with random drug testing; the offender must also attend substance abuse and impulse control treatment |
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| 10. Involve offenders to enhance their engagement in assessment, case planning, and supervision | Rather than a contact-driven approach, officers should incorporate a behavioral management model, where the offender is an active participant in developing the case plan | During the initial interview, the offender helps the supervising officer to prioritize the desired goals of supervision, and to establish standards of motivation and acceptable outcomes |
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| 11. Engage informal social controls to facilitate community reintegration | Officers cannot maintain persistent contact, and do not know offenders well; they can rely on the offenders' relationships with family and friends to produce positive change | In developing the case plan, an officer might inquire about the offender's support system, developing ways in which their family can be engaged toward reducing recidivism risk |
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| 12. Incorporate incentives and rewards into the supervision process | Offender motivation may increase when positive reinforcment is present; to support pro-social change, good behaviors should be noted and rewarded, incentivizing compliance | Following three months of no technical violations and a positive attitude, the supervising officer may award a certificate of achievement, ask them to mentor, and lower the frequency of reporting |
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| 13. Employ graduated, problem-solving responses to violations of supervision conditions in a swift and certain manner | Minor violations can be handled best in the community; the sanction should be reflective of the severity of the infraction, and must be quick and certain to enhance deterrence | After failing an office drug test, the officer requires the offender to perform 10 hours of community service the following weekend; the second occurrence will result in 30 days in jail |
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| Source: The Pew Center on the States (2008), Putting Public Safety First: 13 Strategies for Successful Supervision and Reentry |
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Much has also been learned about what types of programs do not reduce recidivism. This is important, because resources are being wasted on ineffective practices, and some strategies may actually increase offending, thereby jeopardizing public safety. Interventions that do not try to change the characteristics that are known to cause crime are likely to fail. Popular subcultural, medical, and new age “treatments” (such as pet therapy, cosmetic surgery, baking classes, or drum circles) cannot logically prevent crime because they are not addressing what causes people to break the law.
Control
Tough-on-crime initiatives argue that increasing control over offenders will reduce recidivism. Advances in technology have made heightened surveillance of offenders possible, such as through drug testing and electronic monitoring. Evaluations show that many programs have substantially increased their observation of offending activity, though reoffending rates have not changed; this is due to an increased detection of technical violations that may not be related to criminal activity, and to a failure to incorporate treatment components. Numerous studies show that an increase in toughness, surveillance, or control does not correspond with positive offender change or improved public safety. In fact, many studies demonstrate that these “punishing smarter” strategies overwhelm the system. While popular, one of the most ineffective practices is intensive supervision;10 watching offenders more closely does not reduce crime, but only draws more attention to the misbehavior that can revoke community release.
After a number of blanket approaches to offender control failed to reduce reoffending, many jurisdictions began experimenting with focused deterrence (see “Focused Deterrence” on page 23). These strategies intensify enforcement on those individuals responsible for much of the offending within a high crime area. Evaluations of these interventions have shown substantial promise in crime reduction. The principle components of focused deterrence are 1) communicating a clear, unambiguous threat to a small number of active networked offenders, 2) coupling the message of intolerance with active community support, and 3) providing services to offenders wanting to exit crime. For offenders who desire to change their lifestyle after being targeted by law enforcement, greater success is achieved when treatment is provided as a substitute to crime. Many high-risk offenders targeted with focused deterrence are on probation or parole, and police departments can be excellent members of these multi-agency initiatives.
Rehabilitation and Control
Given the limitations of traditional supervision, community corrections agencies recognized the need to balance rehabilitation and control (refer back to Figure 4 on page 16). While correctional rehabilitation is a necessary ingredient to preventing crime, individuals at high risk of committing additional crimes must be subject to some level of control as a safeguard. Multi-agency collaborations allow for the marriage of two seemingly incompatible goals: Offenders can be actively monitored so that risk is managed and short-term compliance is achieved, while still focusing on services that address the factors necessary for long-term behavioral change.
Box 1. Focused Deterrence
While many evaluations of focused deterrence interventions show a reduction in local crime, this Guide argues that the reason for this success goes beyond heightened law enforcement.
Mark Kleiman’s 2009 book, When Brute Force Fails, offers an excellent explanation for why this is so. An atmosphere of zero-tolerance can be developed without proud use of incarceration. The key is to clearly specify the new rules of the crime and law game, and then deliver the promised consequences any time one of these rules is broken.
David Kennedy’s 2011 book, Don’t Shoot, provides a number of examples of how to accomplish this task. Among these include: emphasizing certainty of punishment rather than severity, concentrating law enforcement efforts as opposed to dispersing them, communicating specific threats to individual offenders, and enforcing the rules of conditional release to support community corrections efforts.
Related to offender monitoring and treatment, focused deterrence means targeting resources toward individual offenders. Rather than hoping that generic threats of punishment influence their behavior, police should tailor the treatment options and consequences of crime to the specific offender.
One tactic that uses these best practices is proactive community supervision.11 Excessive scrutiny of offenders’ compliance with rules is not effective; the closer offenders are watched, the more they are observed violating their supervision conditions. So rather than emphasizing meticulous control, this proactive community supervision model manages behavior. Offenders’ behavior is carefully monitored and measured, rewarded and punished as necessary, until pro-social change is observed. Features of these programs include evidence-based standardized offender risk assessments, matching supervisees to services that effectively reduce the propensity to commit crime, emphasizing achievement through the reinforcement of positive behavior, and maintaining an environment where offenders make small improvements and lessons can be learned from relapses.12
These proactive problem-solving partnerships are one of the most effective ways of producing pro-social behavior among community supervised offenders.13 Nevertheless, behavioral management strategies require multiple community partnerships, and the police are pivotal in shaping the actions of offenders on release. The following section outlines specific strategies for police collaborations with community corrections agencies, demonstrating how partnerships can effectively prevent crime among probationers and parolees.