Conceptualizing the Personal Touch: Experiential Knowledge and Gendered Strategies in Community Supervision Work

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Welsh
Keyword(s):  
Public Safety ◽  
Prisoner Reentry ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Experiential Knowledge ◽  
Probation Officers ◽  
Community Supervision ◽  
Depth Interviews

Tasked with a fractured institutional mandate of ensuring public safety while facilitating the rehabilitation of their criminalized clients, community supervision workers exercise a considerable amount of discretion in how to achieve these goals. Yet much remains unknown about these workers’ strategies for doing so, which are informed by experiential knowledge and social identities—what I call the “personal touch.” Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted with California state parole agents and county probation officers as part of a larger ethnographic inquiry of prisoner reentry, I apply a feminist lens to analyze how workers leverage personal aspects of themselves that they value to manage the impossibilities of their work. My findings show how workers employ a personal touch to connect with clients in meaningful ways, but also how these approaches are built on normative assumptions about gender.

How Formerly Incarcerated Women Confront the Limits of Caring and the Burdens of Control Amid California’s Carceral Realignment

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Welsh
Keyword(s):  
Public Safety ◽  
Processing System ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Community Supervision ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Institutional Goals ◽  
Invisible Work ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated Women ◽  
Depth Interviews

The largest scale effort to reduce our reliance on incarceration is currently taking place in California. Drawing on in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated women on two different forms of community supervision in one California county, this article makes two main contributions. First, I offer a conceptual framework for understanding how women experience the goals of community supervision. Because actual rehabilitation is often off-limits, I suggest that these institutional goals are organized around caring, control, and self-governance: Caring is exhibited by supervision officers in lieu of substantive assistance toward rehabilitation; control for the sake of public safety remains a key aim of community supervision; and self-governance is an unstated institutional goal through which women are forced to take on the invisible work of managing their own rehabilitation. Second, I assess how—if at all—California’s decarceration effort has shifted institutional goals, and what this means for women. I argue that decarceration’s continued emphasis on control for the sake of public safety impedes the transformative potential of efforts to restructure the crime-processing system.

A Dual Experiment in Intensive Community Supervision: Minnesota's Prison Diversion and Enhanced Supervised Release Programs

1995 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH PIPER DESCHENES ◽  
SUSAN TURNER ◽  
JOAN PETERSILIA
Keyword(s):  
Public Safety ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Community Supervision ◽  
Diversion Program ◽  
Intensive Supervision ◽  
National Institute Of Justice ◽  
Supervised Release

In 1990, Minnesota enacted legislation to implement an intensive community supervision program as an alternative both to prison and to routine parole. The National Institute of Justice funded RAND to evaluate the program. This article reports on two randomized field experiments designed to measure the implementation and impact of the programs. Detailed information on offender background, services received, and 1-year outcomes was collected for 300 participants. Results showed that the programs were fairly well implemented. Two-year follow-up results indicated that prison-diversion offenders under intensive community supervision posed no greater risk to public safety than those initially sentenced to prison. The prison-diversion program resulted in savings of about $5,000 per offender per year, but these savings were offset by the greater cost of intensive supervision for parolees.

scholarly journals “People Aren’t Afraid Anymore, But It’s Hard to Find Books": Reading Practices That Inform the Personal and Social Identities of Self-Identified Lesbian and Queer Young Women

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulette M. Rothbauer
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Voluntary Reading ◽  
Dissertation Research ◽  
Depth Interviews

This presentation is an overview of findings from my dissertation research into the voluntary reading practices of lesbian and queer young women. Three themes emerged from analysis of in-depth interviews: reading as escape, reading for possibilities, and reading for community. The roles of libraries, bookstores and the Internet are discussed.Cette présentation donne un aperçu des résultats de mon mémoire de recherche sur les pratiques volontaires de lecture de lesbiennes et de jeunes femmes allosexuelles. Trois thèmes découlent de cette analyse d’entrevues en profondeur : la lecture comme évasion, la lecture comme potentiel et la lecture pour la collectivité. Le rôle des bibliothèques, des librairies et d’Internet est examiné. 

Back-End Sentencing and Parole Revocation

Criminology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryken Grattet
Keyword(s):  
Prisoner Reentry ◽  
Revolving Door ◽  
Community Supervision ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Criminal Convictions ◽  
Technical Violations ◽  
Parole Board ◽  
Lower Standard ◽  
Back Door

Back-end sentencing refers to the practice of sending formerly incarcerated people back to prison for parole violations. The concept was popularized by Jeremy Travis in his book But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry (2005) to sensitize researchers and policymakers to the overlooked contribution of parole violations and revocations to the increased use of incarceration during the 1980s to early 2000s. European scholars have used the term “back-door” sentences to refer to the same idea. Although revocation results in an action that is analogous to a sentence, procedures employed in revocation hearings operate under a lower standard of evidence—a “preponderance of the evidence”—and have fewer opportunities for representation and appeal than sentences given out in criminal courts. In California, where back-end sentencing had become routine by 1995, nearly half of all entries into prison annually were the result of parole board revocations rather criminal convictions. A portion of the violations that resulted in reincarceration were “technical violations,” which include noncriminal violations of a parolee’s terms of supervision, such as traveling more than 50 miles from their residence, not showing up for appointments, or associating with gang members or criminal peers. Commentators emphasized the ways that the back-end sentencing traps individuals in a “revolving door” between prison and the community supervision phases of punishment, “churning” back and forth between the two. Some research explicitly employs the term “back-end sentencing” whereas other scholarship relevant to the topic focuses on how parole systems deal with parole violators via the revocation process.

Evaluation of the Implementation of a Risk-Need-Responsivity Service in Community Supervision in Sweden

2020 ◽  
pp. 009385482095874
Author(s):  
Louise C. Starfelt Sutton ◽  
Marcus Dynevall ◽  
Johan Wennerholm ◽  
Sarah Åhlén ◽  
Tanya Rugge ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Therapy ◽  
Pilot Trial ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Probation Officers ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
Cognitive Behavioral ◽  
Community Supervision ◽  
Case File ◽  
Risk Principle ◽  
Risk Need Responsivity

The effective use of the core treatment principles from the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model has the potential to reduce criminal recidivism significantly. A pilot trial of the RNR-based model Krimstics in the Swedish probation service showed increased RNR adherence but no effects on recidivism. The subsequent implementation of Krimstics involved the training and clinical support of more than 700 probation officers working with community supervision. In parallel, an implementation evaluation examining RNR adherence was undertaken, collecting and coding audio-recorded supervision sessions and case file data. Findings showed that Krimstics-trained probation officers ( N = 96) used cognitive behavioral therapy-based techniques in supervision sessions while demonstrating moderate-to-high levels of relationship building skills. However, adherence to the risk principle was lacking and key cognitive behavioral techniques showed poor quality. Although Krimstics has increased RNR adherence in a Swedish context, challenges with implementing theory into practice may obscure the assessment of the service’s effectiveness.

scholarly journals Performing love, prosperity and Chinese hipsterism: Young independent travellers in Pai, Thailand

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Kimber ◽  
JingJing Yang ◽  
Scott Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Digital Camera ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Northern Thailand ◽  
Tourist Attractions ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Chinese Tourists ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Chinese Travellers ◽  
A Performance

Young independent Chinese travellers are increasingly visiting Pai, a small town in northern Thailand, in part influenced by the popularity of the 2009 Thai movie Pai in Love. Using a performance perspective, combined with theory on affordances, which have not yet been applied in the growing body of research on Chinese tourists, this article examines the wide variety of performances in Pai by young independent Chinese travellers, many of which revolve around tourist photography. Drawing upon participant observation and in-depth interviews with Chinese travellers in Pai, the findings reveal that many young Chinese independent traveller performances in Pai revolve around the creation of online self-identities of prosperity and globalisation, love and alternative social identities such as Chinese hipsterism or Xiao Qing Xin. Central to many of these hybrid performances is the digital camera, which affords new, more playful, embodied ways of encountering and interacting with tourist attractions, while simultaneously offering a means of recording and refining performances that are then distributed via the ‘statusphere’. The article’s use of a performance lens provides new insights into Chinese tourism consumption, and highlights the importance of physical, material and social affordances in performing tourism.

A Relational Sociological Analysis of Instagram in Turkey

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 165-189
Author(s):  
Nazar Bal ◽  
Aytul Kasapoglu
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Relational Sociology ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Social Media Tools ◽  
Grounded Theory Approach ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Consumption Habits

The research problem with the study that underpins this article is that Instagram manipulates the consumption habits of daily life in an intense manner. In this context, the main purpose of the article is to examine how people change their consumption habits by being affected by Instagram in daily life. In this context, answers to the questions of what Instagram and consumption mean in daily life and what are their effects were sought. Along with the globalization process and capitalism, Instagram, which is one of the popular social media tools especially in recent years, has started to affect people positively and negatively in cultural, social and economic terms. One of these effects is consumption habits. However, people's lifestyles and social identities are changing. The theoretical basis of this study is relational sociology and Pierre Bourdieu's (1984) concepts of “habitus”, “field” and “taste”. How Instagram manipulates consumption habits has been tried to be put forward with a Grounded Theory approach. In the empirical part of the study, in-depth interviews were made with 14 women who are Instagram users. Research findings reveal that the consumption habits of individuals change from utilitarian consumption to hedonist consumption. These hedonist consumption habits, on the other hand, can be said to lead people away from their own social realities and to alienate themselves and society.

Probation in America: Armed, private and unaffordable?

2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Teague
Keyword(s):  
Prison Population ◽  
Community Corrections ◽  
The State ◽  
Probation Officers ◽  
Community Supervision ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Impact

While America is renowned for its enormous prison industrial complex, less academic attention has been paid to the state of probation intervention. The probation population has long been rising more swiftly than the prison population, and one in 45 adults in the USA is now subject to community supervision. This article explores the development of American probation and considers a series of key contextual issues, including the fragmented nature of the US probation system and the philosophies which underpin it, supervision fees, privatization, and the arming of probation officers, in order to illuminate how the community corrections system functions. The Justice Reinvestment initiative is also considered, and the impact of budgetary pressures upon probation is taken into account.

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