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79 Fed. Probation 20 (2015)
Probation Officer Roles: A Statutory Analysis

handle is hein.journals/fedpro79 and id is 125 raw text is: 20 FEDERAL PROBATION Volume 79 Number 3 Ming-Li Hsieh Moana Hafoka Youngki Woo Jacqueline van Wormer Mary K. Stohr Craig Hemmens Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology Washington State University PROBATION OFFICERS HAVE long faced enormous challenges in their work, including large caseloads, limited resources, offender management difficulties, and criti- cism of high recidivism rates and the related threat to public safety (Lutze, 2014; Lynch, 2001; Simon, 1993). The latter two issues- offender management and recidivism-were highlighted during the 1970s and 1980s as public support for rehabilitation as the pri- mary goal of corrections was waning and the get tough approach gained prominence (Gleicher, Manchak, & Cullen, 2013; Lutze, 2014). The result was an increased emphasis on law enforcement at the expense of offender rehabilitation in the latter part of the twen- tieth century. By the early 2000s, however, the pendulum had begun to shift somewhat, as researchers, the public, and legislators bemoaned the costs, both social and finan- cial, of the get tough approach. Numerous studies have found that retributive strategies and intensive supervision probation have not achieved reductions in recidivism (Gendreau, Goggin, Cullen, & Andres, 2000; Hyatt & Barnes, 2014; Lowenkamp, Flores, Holsinger, Makarios, & Latessa, 2010; MacKenzie, 2000; Petersilia & Turner, 1993). At the same time, rehabilitation pro- gramming has experienced a renaissance as researchers have uncovered treatment approaches and protocols that when combined with risk assessment and case management, are related to lower rates of recidivism (Andrews & Bonta, 2010a; Taxman, 2002). Nevertheless, as recently as 2008, Skeem and Manchak (2008, p. 221) noted that this retributive doctrine which utilizes control- oriented surveillance has been the dominant model of probation supervision, whereas the treatment model is difficult to find in practice in institutions and agencies across the states. According to Taxman (2008), the role of probation officer has been in a stage of metamorphosis, where it has been reca- librated to combine rehabilitation and law enforcement roles in recognition of the need to both control and treat and as a means of handling large-scale community correc- tions populations. Recent figures indicate that around 4.8 million out of the 7 million people in the criminal justice system in the United States were under community supervision in 2012 (Glaze & Herberman, 2013). Probation officers who balanced the law enforcement and rehabilitation roles have been found to improve the effectiveness of supervision, reduce recidivism, and provide a promising prosocial life for offenders that includes sound coping mechanisms even under a complicated workload (Whetzel, Paparozzi, Alexander, & Lowenkamp, 2011). Such a balanced approach is now acknowledged by scholars as a contemporary goal for probation officers (Lutze, 2014; Miller, 2015; Skeem & Manchak, 2008; Whetzel et al., 2011). Historically, given the variation in policies across agencies and jurisdictions, probation officers have adjusted their images from time to time in their search for the best practices in community corrections among these goals: social worker (addressing client needs and assisting in rehabilitation) (Andrews, Zinger, Hoge, Bonta, Gendreau, & Cullen, 1990), peace officer (enforcing laws and rules and working with court orders) (Benekos, 1990), and synthetic officer (combining both) (Miller, 2015). Besides practitioners' endorse- ments and scholars' recognition of types of supervision philosophies and practices, little is known about these role differences from a legal perspective. This is unfortunate, as statutes potentially guide probation officer performance and highlight the functions of officer-offender interactions. It is important to understand the statu- torily mandated roles of probation officers because such awareness would further inform legislators and policymakers about the poten- tial disjunction between the ideology of the law and the reality of the practice. To fill this gap in the literature, the current study employs a statutory analysis to examine the roles of probation officers. We identify which probation roles are statutorily mandated today and whether such requirements fit the trend of the balanced approach as identified by Taxman (2008). 20 FEDERAL PROBATION Volume 79 Number 3

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