Doctoral Dissertation: Criminal Offenders, Access to Resources, and Recidivism

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Many of those under court supervision after a criminal conviction have limited resources, due to issues such as poverty, disability, unemployment, living in high crime neighborhoods, and homelessness. While members of a person's social networks can provide access to such resources, women offenders have especially limited network support, in part due to the stigmatizing effects of a conviction. This project will conduct interviews with female felons on parole or probation as a way of analyzing whether certain personal networks, including experts, problem solving help, and personal support, influence rates of recidivism. Consequently, this project will consider whether policies and practices, some of which prohibit offenders from interacting with certain people such as other ex-offenders, influence offenders' social networks, access to resources, and recidivism. This project will apply egocentric social network analysis theories and techniques to understand the structure and composition of women offenders? personal networks and access to key resources. The project will seek to determine the association between access to resources and the likelihood of offenders' recidivism. To do so, the project will interview 160 women offenders, 80 of whom were on parole and 80 on probation, from 16 Michigan counties that include rural, suburban, small town, and urban areas. Data will be collected on offender characteristics, network member characteristics, tie/relationship characteristics, and overall network characteristics. De-identified data from the project will be made publicly available. The project will test single-level and multilevel models to ascertain the effects of offenders' social networks on recidivism.