Managing Drug Involved Probationers with Swift and Certain Sanctions: Evaluating Hawaii's HOPE

Abstract

We are very grateful to Judge Steven Alm and his staff for our initial introduction to HOPE and for facilitating meetings with the many players engaged with the program. This study would not have been possible without the outstanding probation officers in the Integrated Community Sanctions unit and at the Adult Client Services division. We are thankful to both probation offices for providing space for our researchers, granting access to probation officers and probationers, and agreeing to comply with study protocols. We are grateful to the many judges, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers, and court staff who provided feedback on early drafts of our survey. We would like to thank Mark Steinmeyer for coordinating a panel of methodologists, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, to discuss the design of the randomized controlled trial. We would like to thank the panelists:

Decriminalizing Delinquency: The Effect of Raising the Age of Majority on Juvenile Recidivism

“…These initiatives include cognitive behavioral therapy in juvenile justice settings (Heller et al 2011;Landenberger and Lipsey 2005) and a regime of swift, certain, and fair sanctions (Hawken and Kleiman 2009;Bonnie et al 2013). The latter has shown success among adults and is currently being tested in the juvenile system.…”

Swift and Certain, Proportionate and Consistent: Key Values of Urine Drug Test Consequences for Probationers

“…Studies have documented probation officers overwhelmed with caseloads, some with officer-toprobationer ratios of 150:1, even as high as 180:1; heavy caseloads are clinically and ethically relevant because they are an impediment to keeping up with or detecting violations [2,4,5].…”

“…To be clear, what is being referred to here is a judge's punitive response to an offender who has violated agreed-upon terms of probation. When judges do levy sanctions, there can be variation and inconsistency in those sanctions [5,8]. In some cases, sanctions-months, or even years, in prison for one or more failed UDTs-might be more severe than legal professionals, correctional workers, probationers, and health care professionals, for example, might believe are warranted for the positive UDT infraction(s), particularly when treatment could be a more appropriate course of action [2].…”

Punitiveness in Australia: electronic monitoring vs the prison

“…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]).…”