Working with the Police: a Positive Outlook from a National Sample of Probation and Parole Officers
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Working with the Police: a Positive Outlook from a National Sample of Probation and Parole Officers Adam K. Matz 1
&
Bitna Kim 2
# Society for Police and Criminal Psychology 2019
Abstract Formal police–probation/parole partnerships were popularized in the early 1990s, many modeled after the perceived success of Boston’s Operation Night Light. Yet, funding dissipated in the 2000s and little research was completed. This study represents the first national survey of frontline probation/parole officers concerning the prevalence of partnerships with the police, their support for partnerships, and an examination of factors that influence that support. Findings reveal that many partnerships exist informally and very few report the lack of any partnership with the police. Indeed, these results confirm that working with the police is an integral function of community supervision work, especially in regard to information sharing. Keywords Probation . Parole . Partnership . Mission distortion . Enhanced supervision
Introduction Probation and parole have been at the center of the criminal justice reform rhetoric in recent decades (Cullen et al. 2017; Schwartz 2018). Mass imprisonment is not sustainable (Aviram 2015; Cullen et al. 2017), and community supervision has been viewed as the, perhaps unrealized, panacea to this systemic fiscal and social problem (Durlauf and Nagin 2011). Police–probation/parole partnerships, best regarded as a promising program or practice, represents one solution born from the frustrations of the early 1990s, motivated largely by inner-city gang violence and a recognition that many of these individuals were actively under supervision (Corbett 1998). While there is little question that police and probation have often worked together throughout the last century (Nash 1999b), explicit programmatic research findings have been rare (e.g., Alarid and Rangel 2018; Worrall and Gaines 2006) and federal funding as well as national attention to this practice has waxed and waned considerably (Matz and Kim 2017).
* Adam K. Matz [email protected] 1
Department of Criminal Justice, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA
2
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, USA
Community supervision, specifically probation for adults and juveniles, is the most prominent sanction for criminal behavior (Hockenberry and Puzzanchera 2018; Kaeble and Cowhig 2018). The adult population, for example, has grown dramatically, from 1.2 million in 1981 to 4.5 million today (Kaeble and Cowhig 2018; Maxwell 1982). This is well beyond the growth rate of the general population (retrievable from the US Census Bureau). Yet, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the expected growth rate of the probation officer workforce continues to remain average in relation to other occupations. Further, officers’ caseloads have increased not only in volume, but more high-risk and high-needs individuals are being placed on supervision (DeMichele and Paparozzi 2008; Paparozzi and DeM
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