Human Services Brief

Offender Needs and the Allocation of Probation Services

Issue

Though offenders comprise a relatively needy population in contrast with non-offenders, criminologists increasingly recognize that very few of an offender’s social, academic, vocational, mental health or other deficits may actually be related to future offending. Identification of so-called criminogenic needs, i.e., deficits which exacerbate an individual’s risk of reoffending, can help inform decisions about which offenders may be successfully rehabilitated and what treatment programs and community services can bring about the largest reductions in crime.

Data and Methods

Data were collected on 860 male and 241 female felony probationers who entered the caseloads of two regional offices of the Harris County (Houston) Community Supervision and Corrections Department between mid-May of 1991 and mid-June of 1992. The sample excluded individuals who absconded supervision immediately following sentencing and who thus were unavailable for assessment. All subjects were tracked for four years from the date of assessment. The outcome of interest was whether the subject was rearrested during the follow-up period. Over the four year period, 36.7% of the offenders experienced rearrest.

Indicators of offender needs were developed for each of the ten domains that are measured as part of the needs assessment process conducted by community supervision agencies nationwide. Areas of need included academic skills, emotional stability, relationships, financial management, companions, substance abuse, physical and mental health, employment/vocational skills, mental ability, and sexual deviancy. In addition, the analysis included measures of antisocial attitudes/values as well as behavioral controls (e.g., impulsivity), in order to take into account recent and strong research support linking these deficits to offender recidivism. Finally, the analysis included indicators of family dysfunction (e.g., feelings of hostility toward parents), inasmuch as these factors have traditionally been perceived as legitimate arenas for treatment intervention. In all, the analysis explored the relation of 54 indicators of offender needs to the probability of rearrest.

The analysis employed logistic regression as the analytic method. Logistic regression answers the question, which offender needs increase risk of rearrest?

Discussion

  A series of bivariate logistic regressions, in which each needs variable was regressed on the outcome measure, rearrest, determined that 20 of the original 54 needs indicators were significantly related to the likelihood of rearrest. Table 1 depicts these results.

The 20 indicators were subsequently analyzed in a multivariate logistic regression, using the forward conditional method of entry. This method permits the researcher to test whether particular variables continue to account for variation in the dependent (outcome) variable after the effects of other variables have already been considered.

Results are depicted in Table 2. Several striking features appear in this table. The first is the dominance of cognitive and behavioral characteristics, versus symptoms of those characteristics, as predictors of rearrest. Of the eight variables which remained in the regression equation, five reflect actual behaviors or attitudes and two of the remaining—remedial education and short-term relations—may be surrogate measures of social inadequacy. This calls into question the practice of basing program referral decisions using symptoms, such as the percent of time employed, to determine which programs to allocate to which offenders. For instance, the fact that employment skills indicators did not contribute to the prediction of rearrest after the effects of other variables were controlled for suggests that employment difficulty is likely less a function of vocational deficits than it may be the result of poor problem solving, inadequate behavioral controls, antisocial attitudes or social skill deficiencies. Using symptoms to guide program choices could lead to referrals to job skills programs when programs teaching problem-solving, impulsivity reduction and other cognitive skills may be more strongly warranted to help offenders resist future criminal opportunities.

A second interesting feature is the failure of indicators of drug involvement to enter the regression equation after the effects of other variables were taken into account, an extraordinary omission in light of longstanding empirical support linking drug use and crime. This finding suggests that physiological cravings and emotional distress associated with drug use probably play a lesser role in the choice to commit crimes than do impaired behavioral controls, faulty belief systems and poor problem-solving skills.

A third important feature, drawing on both the bivariate and multivariate regressions analyses, is the failure of “etiological” factors such as satisfaction with parents or childhood to predict rearrest. This finding suggests that treatment programs which emphasize dealing with “family of origin” issues over cognitive and behavioral modalities may be less effective in reducing crime than those which target the offender’s current behaviors and belief systems.

How to read the tables:

The logit coefficient indicates the change in the log odds of an arrest occurring when the offender need is present, versus when it not. The odds ratio, which is easier to interpret, tells how much more likely an arrest is when the offender has the need than when s/he does not. For example, looking at Table 1, offenders who count criminals among their companions are roughly 1.5 times as likely to experience a new arrest as those who do not keep criminals as friends. The p-value is an indicator of the reliability of the findings: it measures the probability that the results are due to chance factors in sampling alone. Generally, researchers discount variables with p-values greater than .05.

Recommendations

The practice of referring probationers who manifest academic, vocational, substance abuse addiction or other needs to treatment programs and other community services is a long entrenched tradition of probation and parole agencies—yet the idea of providing programs to criminals has never been popular. The “principle of least eligibility” suggests that in relation to law-abiding, needy individuals, offenders are least deserving of social services and treatment programs.

This study strongly suggests that it may be possible to increase the crime reduction potential, and hence, the public value, of community supervision programs by making the following changes in offender needs assessment and referral practices.

First, agencies should expand the current number and variety of domains currently included in the scope of assessment to incorporate measures of behavioral controls and antisocial values. Second, assessment tools should emphasize alterable offender characteristics over behavioral symptoms that are less easily interpreted. Finally, judges and officers should avoid making participation in programs that do not address criminogenic needs conditions of an offender’s supervision. Inappropriate referrals may increase the probability that an offender will be revoked and transferred to already crowded prisons for failure to comply with program conditions. Alternately, such offenders may be “punished” by reassignment to more stringent levels of probation supervision, where increased surveillance and technical conditions make revocation and return to prison even more likely.