A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of an Intensive Rehabilitation Supervision Program

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, an increased understanding has been developed of what interventions do and do not work with offenders. Treatment programs that attend to offender risk, needs, and responsivity factors have been associated with reduced recidivism. There is also a recognition that sanctions without a rehabilitative component are ineffective in reducing offender recidivism. This study evaluates a cognitive-behavioral treatment program delivered within the context of intensive community supervision via electronic monitoring (EM). Offenders receiving treatment while in an EM program were statistically matched on risk and needs factors to inmates who did not receive treatment services. The results showed that treatment was effective in reducing recidivism for higher risk offenders, confirming the risk principle of offender treatment. The importance of matching treatment intensity to offender risk level and ensuring that there is a treatment component in intensive supervision programs is reaffirmed.

The Impact of Electronic Monitoring and Disruptive Innovation on Recidivism Rates in Federal Prisons: A Secondary Data Analysis

“…Results that contradict with each other may have been the result in the varying definitions of recidivism [14,15]. Unfortunately, early evaluations methodological problems also characterize outcome studies nearly 20 years after the implementation of EM programs (Bonta et al [16]), findings from researches that sought to address these problems are discouraging. In the widely cited Canadian study by Bonta et al [17], for example, the authors found that once risk level was taken into consideration, EM offenders no longer showed significant difference in recidivism rates compared to groups of offenders who were on probation EM and those released directly into the community with no such conditions imposed.…”

“…Recent studies on the probability to re-offend on low-risk offenders have been made whether they are under the EM programs or not. Moreover, most studies conclude that it is not the EM programs that have brought positive effects but on the risk level of offenders [16].…”

Punitiveness in Australia: electronic monitoring vs the prison

“…Rather, a significant body of research indicates that imprisonment might have a criminogenic effect [68,129]. 27 While the empirical evidence to support EM as a long-term rehabilitative tool is lacking, EM shows potential. If programs are designed with therapeutic considerations in mind [154], the indications are that EM offers significant advantages over prison in this regard.…”

“…For example, the threat of relatively short, but certain, periods of imprisonment has proven to be an effective deterrent [91,211]. The large qualitative difference 27 Reasons for prison's poor rehabilitative record include in-prison rehabilitation programs typically not according with established principles of effective treatment, factors associated with reduced recidivism not being able to be optimally addressed in prison, and inmate exposure to criminogenic factors in the prison environment (such as prison being a criminal learning environment, strengthening antisocial bonds and weakening prosocial bonds, stigmatizing offenders, and exacerbating other identified correlates of criminal activity, such as unstable employment or housing) ( [129], pp.126-128; [3,119]). between prison and EM may limit EM's ability to deter crime, if it is not seen as sufficiently "distasteful" ( [68], p. 36).…”

“…34 Although relatively intense supervision is more likely to bring about prolonged and sustained behavioral change [85], intense supervision may be both disproportionally punitive, and may have a criminogenic effect on lowrisk offenders [3]. 27. This option, however, risks placing undue power with correctional authorities, rather than judicial officers, in effectively determining an offender's sentence and, potentially, in breaching offenders and sending them back to prison.…”