Understanding Resource Deprivation: A Multilevel Examination of the Impact County Deprivation has on Community Supervision and Treatment Outcomes

LaToshia A. Butler

Advisor: Danielle S. Rudes, PhD, CHSSWeb Design Preview

Committee Members: Evan Marie Lowder, Charlotte Gill, Jill Viglione

Online Location,
April 04, 2022, 09:30 AM to 11:30 AM

Abstract:

Originally designed to serve as an alternative to incarceration, community corrections (i.e., probation, parole, and supervised release) is the largest component of the U.S. correctional system with approximately four million adults under some form of community supervision (Oudekerk & Kaeble, 2021). Decades of mass incarceration have led to unprecedented numbers of individuals returning home under community-based supervision (Chamberlain & Wallace, 2016). These last few decades, recidivism rates remain largely unchanged causing community-corrections scholars and practitioners to question what needs are unaddressed amongst justice-involved individuals. While evidenced-based practices (EBPs), such as those modeled after risk-need-responsivity (RNR) principles, call for practitioners to make effective case management decisions that better align supervisees with targeted treatments/services/programs, many individuals still return to disadvantaged neighborhoods with high crime and a heavy concentration of justice-involved individuals (Chamberlain & Wallace, 2016; Andrews et al., 1990). Although participation in programs and services that target criminogenic needs shows some capacity to lower recidivism (Andrews & Bonta, 2010), elements of concentrated disadvantage and the availability of treatment programs and services directly impact recidivism (Hipp et al., 2010) and thus requires more attention.

The RNR framework emphasizes the need to link individuals to appropriate, targeted interventions and programs, however, community environments that lack the capability to deliver these services may also be a contributing factor in unchanged recidivism (Taxman, 2020). In order for, community corrections to successfully implement EBPs and improve outcomes, future research must extend beyond individual-level predictors of recidivism and into community-level factors related to supervision outcomes.

This dissertation seeks to contribute to this knowledge by enhancing the consciousness and perception of the challenges and barriers the reentry population faces related to treatment resource availability within community environments. More specifically, this study incorporates multilevel modeling to examine how individual-level predictors (i.e., probationer demographics and specific type of treatment) and county-level conditions related to resource deprivation (i.e., county poverty, unemployment, and violent crime rates) and treatment availability/capacity affect supervision outcomes of program completion and reconviction. The effectiveness of EBPs may only be as fruitful as the ability to connect supervisees to available, prescribed, targeted interventions. Thus, it is important to understand how and if individual probationer predictors and county-level conditions of deprivation affect the ability of the community and corrections agencies to be responsive to individual needs. It is hopeful that this research will begin to bridge the current knowledge gap and provide communities and corrections agencies with sound recommendations for the development of improved probation and parole policies, practices, and resources.