The Role of Sanctions and Incentives in Promoting Successful Reentry: Evidence From the SVORI Data

Abstract

Prior work on the efficacy of incentives and sanctions in community supervision practices suggests both can encourage desistance during prison reentry. Yet limited scholarship has investigated how sanctions and incentives impact reentry together and most research in this area is cross-sectional. Using four waves of data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative, results of cross-lagged dynamic panel models reveal that certain incentives, namely supervision officer praise, relate to significantly lower levels of offending and substance use. Conversely, supervision sanctions and supervision officer reprimands relate to higher levels of offending and substance use over time. Overall, supervision practices that emphasize recognizing prosocial behavior over punishing noncompliance appear to hold greater promise for promoting successful reentry. Findings suggest that supervision agencies should consider the potential negative outcomes of sanctions during the reintegration process, and policies should be put into place that more closely consider the role of sanctions on behavior.

Assessing the reliability and validity of the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) program tool

“…Rewards and sanctions have been found to increase rule compliance, which has led to fewer rule violations including drug relapse (Marlowe et al, 2005 ; Marlowe et al, 2008 ; Maxwell, 2000 ; Maxwell & Gray, 2000 ; McKay, 2017 ; Robinson et al, 2015 ). The use of incentives improves compliance more than sanctions (Mowen et al, 2018 ; Sloas et al, 2019 ; Wodahl et al, 2011 ). Graduated sanctions or decision-matrices have aided in appropriately matching sanctions and rewards to levels of compliance (Baglivio et al, 2015 ; Guastferro & Daigle, 2012 ; Schumacher & Kurz, 2000 ).…”

Effective Probation Strategies to Respond to Signals of Poor Progress on Community Supervision

“…Despite having one of the largest impacts on reducing violations, incentives were used infrequently by officers. Incentives are a key tool to achieve positive outcomes, particularly the use of incentives more frequently than sanctions and incentives that are offered early in the supervision processes (Mowen et al, 2018; Sloas et al, 2019), which is the key time period in this study. Officers should use incentives as a means to encourage and support compliance that can lead to other positive supervision outcomes.…”

Social Support During Reentry: Family, Mentor, Religious, Parole Officer, and Social Service Roles

“…Following the practice of prior panel studies using SVORI data (Boman & Mowen, 2018; Stansfield et al, 2018), we finalized the study sample using list-wise deletion, which resulted in 499 respondents. Researchers have consistently found that sample attrition in SVORI was random and therefore unlikely to introduce bias to study results (Mowen et al, 2018; Wodahl et al, 2021). The sensitivity tests conducted in this study confirmed this: we discovered no noticeable differences in age, race, SVORI participation, or education level between respondents included and not included in the study (these supplemental analysis results are available upon request).…”