Probation systems in the U.S. & Recidivism

Probation systems in the United States are underfunded, understaffed, and unable to keep track of all the offenders nominally under their supervision--let alone offer them any help. The typical probation worker in overburdened systems is regarded as a combination of a clerk and law enforcement officer. But probation officers are seldom expected, or able, to do much for those under their charge beyond urging them to meet some basic reporting requirements and reporting their failure to do so. Recidivism among those on probation increases at an enormous rate as ever-greater numbers of persons on probation receive even less guidance, supervision, training, or treatment. The key to reducing recidivism lies in improving budgets, staffing, and staff training. But with other improvements the job of probation officer needs to be seriously rethought, especially in terms of those aspects of the job that are the province of traditional social work. The "get tough" approaches to probation, which treat it as merely a branch of the prison system of surveillance and deterrence, need to be improved. In order for the systems to work, however, the probation officer, in addition to functioning as an arm of law enforcement, must also take on complementary social work roles as broker, mediator, evaluator, consultant, and agent of behavior change.

The principal problems with probation are overcrowding and recidivism. But another problem is that the overcrowding has resulted in underfundi

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al. point out, when compared with ordinary probation and parole the ISPs consistently "result in the same or slightly higher recidivism rates" than regular probation programs. MacKenzie's (1997) survey of all studies of alternative modes of crime prevention found the same results for ISP. As she reported they do not, in general, do any worse than standard programs and their principal benefit may be that, if they are an alternative to incarceration for those ineligible for standard parole, they at least cost less than imprisonment. But MacKenzie's survey took in incarceration, ISP, standard probation, correctional boot camps, juvenile wilderness programs, community residential schemes, unstructured counseling, and rehabilitation and she found that of all these programs the only group that produced consistently high reductions in recidivism were those focused on rehabilitation. MacKenzie found that "the best treatment programs reduced recidivism by as much as 10 to 20 percentage points." But therapy, education, and treatment and all sorts of rehabilitation are increasingly seen by the public and politicians as unimportant in probation. The concept of probation derived from classical criminology and was meant to "give the pro

Category: Government - P