POP Center Responses Monitoring Offenders on Conditional Release Page 6

Conclusion

Because offenders on conditional release can relapse and commit new crimes, police have a vested interest in monitoring these individuals and preventing recidivism. As the information in this guide has discussed, there are a number of tactics that are proven to be effective at reducing relapse among community supervised offenders; equally important, there are several strategies that do not work, and can even make things worse. Although police–corrections partnerships are young, we hope that the ideas presented in this guide will provide readers with practical solutions for policing conditionally released offenders.

Potential Challenges

While police want to maximize public safety, a number of offender’s rights must also be considered. To ensure that police–probation/parole partnerships do not violate the Constitutional rights of offenders, there are two potential limitations that police should be mindful of.

First, experience with past police–community corrections partnerships reveal a number of civil liberties concerns. Most problematic are warrantless searches. Much collaboration involves police officers accompanying probation or parole agents to do home visits or curfew checks. This creates the “stalking horse” phenomenon, in which police gain access to offenders’ homes through their partnering visit.44 Police may accompany probation or parole on warrantless home visits so long as they are under direction of the community corrections agent, and the search is performed for probationary purposes. When the probation/parole officer is being guided by police, or when home visits serve police purposes, resulting gains are illegal.

Second, many innovative programs rely on sharing information relevant to supervised offenders; and though the potential benefits of data exchanges are innumerable, many barriers are present. The National Institute of Justice identifies three steps to overcoming obstacles in data sharing:45

First, exact confidentiality laws must be known, with particular attention to the scope and quality of the data. Organizations must find out what limitations exist for intra-agency information sharing. Often, permission can be gained to bypass confidentiality restrictions following approval of new crime reduction partnerships.

Second, policies for data entry and access may need to be modified. When information cannot be freely exchanged due to existing procedures, changes must be made to data storage and retrieval systems so that agents from either side may access the shared database.

Third, staff should be made aware of the benefits of improved and expanded information flow. When job performance will be affected, staff should be trained on how to work within the bounds of the new data sharing procedures. In particular, staff can learn how to maximize the other agency’s data without interrupting existing processes.

Implications for Police and Offender Monitoring

Any problem-solving effort that only deals with offenders risks being unsustainable. New offenders may replace rehabilitated offenders unless the opportunities for crime are also reduced. Problem-solving efforts must address more than one side of the crime triangle (see Figure 1 on page 5).

Offender-only solutions are not only vulnerable to offender replacement, they may be less effective than solutions that marry monitoring and rehabilitation to crime opportunity blocking. The reason for this is simple: An offender undergoing rehabilitation who is routinely tempted by crime opportunities is more likely to relapse than a similar offender who is not tempted. By blocking temptations, chances of relapse decrease. We suggest that there is an important synergy between opportunity blocking and rehabilitation. Problem-solving solutions that combine both treatment and control can convert active offenders to former offenders faster, and can prevent new offenders from being created.

The most effective collaborations will use police in a specific capacity for which they are useful, rather than in a general support role for corrections agencies. Using the information in this guide, there are specific implications for how police can assist in monitoring offenders on conditional release. Referring back to the crime triangle (see Figure 1 on page 5), police can follow six guidelines to help reduce recidivism of probationers and parolees, thereby increasing public safety: 

Offender: Police should understand and support the principles of effective correctional supervision (see Table 4 on pages 20–21). When resources are targeted at offenders who are at greatest risk of reoffending, when the services given match the specific needs of offenders, and when delivered in settings conducive to offender change, recidivism reductions will be great. Police officers can focus on high-risk offenders, and engage in crime prevention tactics that are proven effective.

Handler: Police on their own are very important offender handlers. Community-oriented policing should maximize informal social control, by soliciting the help of the offender’s family, friends, and neighbors. When the police recruit additional handlers, these individuals act as an extended arm of law enforcement, and send the message that an offender’s entire social circle is committed to their success. 

Place: Police can direct resources so places become less suitable for offending. Community-oriented policing can accomplish this by helping neighborhood residents to take ownership of their areas; by reducing or correcting minor incivilities, the surroundings convey that more serious crime will not be tolerated.

Manager: Police should recruit the owners of crime-prone places. Officers can solicit cooperation from managers of locations that are frequented by probationers and parolees. Given the extensive knowledge that police have of the daily routines of community supervised offenders, this information can be exploited to seek the assistance of place managers in limiting reoffending. 

Target/Victim: Police can work to make targets of crime less attractive and potential victims of crime less vulnerable. By understanding the routine activities of offenders under community supervision, officers can focus their resources on the targets and victims most likely to fall prey to probationers and parolees.

Guardian: Police should enlist informal guardians of potential targets and victims. Officers can educate residents about the threat of crime created by offenders on conditional release. By heightening surveillance within a neighborhood, law enforcement is able to extend itself to the most capable protectors of targets and victims vulnerable to crime. 

Police agencies represent an invaluable tool in improving outcomes for conditionally released offenders, and police–community corrections partnerships should be pursued. Police agencies also have a vital role to play when the emphasis of offender monitoring is the prevention of crime through the promotion of desistance. Notably, police may expand their tactics to include informal social control and community justice, and may serve as experts in surveillance and deterrence. Most importantly, when police are aware of the offenders in their community that are supervised on conditional release, they are in a unique position to enhance control and match offenders to services.