A new study found that a 30-minute “empathy exercise” given to probation officers 10 months later resulted in a 13% reduction in their probation officer’s recidivism rate.
The study appeared March 29 in the journal PNAS.
The study participants were 216 probation or parole officers in a major US city. Together they are responsible for the care of more than 20,000 “adults on probation or probation” (APPs).
Officials completed a 30-minute online exercise designed to reinforce their sense of purpose and improve their understanding of the probation officer’s perspective.
Ten months after this “empathic supervision intervention,” the probation officer’s recidivism rate had dropped by 13%.
The Probation Officer’s Role in the “Journey Back to Prison Journey”
Incarceration is a major problem in the United States, one that is “enormously costly to families and communities and society as a whole,” as the authors write. They wanted to investigate whether the “jail-back-to-jail journey” might depend in part on a parole officer’s relationship with his or her parole or probation officer.
The research team designed an intervention that would make officers more aware “of how they perceive outgroup versus ingroup behavior”.
The idea was to make them less likely “to collectively blame someone outside of the group for their group’s actions.”
The 216 probation and probation officers represented 76% of all PPOs in their department. About 52% were female and their average number of years in the department was ten. In terms of race, 45% were White, 42% Black, 8% Hispanic, 1% Asian, and 3% Other.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of two interventions. One of these was the “empathic supervision intervention” described below. The other was a control or “placebo” intervention. Instead of focusing on empathy, it focused on how officers can use technology to be more organized.
The empathy exercise asked officers to answer questions such as “why is it important for probation officers and probation officer [i.e. H. to feel valued and respected?”
You were also asked to write a letter to a prospective officer-in-training. In that letter, they offered tips on how to avoid the job becoming too impersonal and how to “think about humanity” at work.
Impact of hiring probation officers, 10 months later
Ten months later, among participants who underwent the empathy exercise, there was a significant (13%) reduction in the number of their APPs that had violated the terms of their probation or probation. These effects persisted even after accounting for officers’ race, gender, years of experience, and departmental division.
The study also found that officers who underwent the empathy intervention had significantly fewer “collective guilt” towards APPs.
These results suggest that the relationships between probation officers and their probation officers “are a critical lever in addressing recidivism rates,” the authors write. Likewise, the study points out that targeted psychological interventions such as these “can lead to a long-term reduction in violations and recidivism”.
The impact of this brief intervention could also result in huge taxpayer savings. Figures from the U.S. Bureau of Justice put the current cost of “public correctional services (i.e. prisons, jail, probation and probation)” at $80.7 billion. So a 13% reduction in recidivism would represent huge savings.
Wise interventions on the rise
Researchers have previously used wise interventions of this type in various contexts. They have led to significant improvements in areas as diverse as education, teenage pregnancy, voter turnout, personal health, and more.
Smart interventions usually target the stigmatized or “negatively affected” group. But in this case, the intervention targeted the “gatekeepers”: people “in a position of influence to set the tone of the relationship, change the context, and determine outcomes.” In other words, the parole officers rather than their parole officers.
“The present research,” the authors write, “provides evidence for this concept and that it can work at scale.”
“With a deliberate displacement of dozens of officers ‘ Mindset can result in thousands of people not returning to prison in a single year,’ they conclude, ‘then there is potential for lasting repercussions on other pervasive and central issues in the criminal justice system and beyond.’
Study: “A Scalable Empathic Supervision Intervention to Mitigate Probation and Probation Relapse” Authors: Jason A.Okonofua, Kimia Saadatian, Joseph Ocampo, Michael Ruiz and Perfecta Delgado OxholmPublished in: PNASPublished date: 29. March 2021Photo: by Damir Spanic on Unsplash
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Background:
What is probation? How is it different from probation?
The terms “probation” and “probation” may seem similar, but they are actually two different things. Both words refer to the status of a conditionally released offender. However, they involve different processes.
Probation is basically an alternative to jail or jail, also known (particularly in Europe) as “suspended”.
An offender on parole – a “parole officer” – remains under close supervision and must follow strict regulations during their probationary period. If they break these conditions, they can end up in prison.
Parole, on the other hand, means “conditional release” from prison. This includes regular monitoring by the correctional system, usually in the form of a probation officer. Most prison or imprisonment sentences include the option of probation, which comes into effect after serving a predetermined period of time. The prisoner then becomes a “parole officer”.
What parole and probation have in common is that if you break the terms, you can end up behind bars. These conditions vary from case to case, but often include meeting conditions such as being job-seekers, participating in a counseling or rehabilitation program, and most importantly, not reoffending,
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