A Biosocial Study of Client Outcomes in Probation and Parole: The Role of Officer Stress and the Officer-Client Relationship

美国有近390万成年人在缓刑和假释（即社区监督）中，是监禁人口的两倍多。大约三分之一的监狱人口在导致其重新监禁的事件发生时是受到社区监督的人。缓刑和假释官（PPOs）是社区监督的一线工作者，是改变客户结果的重要推动者。本项目研究PPO相关因素，特别是PPO压力和PPO-客户关系，这些因素可以为针对PPO的干预措施提供信息，使其更好地为改善社区监管结果做好准备。高质量的客户关系被认为是核心纠正实践之一，突出了客户关系在实践中的突出地位及其作为干预措施交付机制的重要性。残障人士承担着执法人员和社会工作者的双重角色，以确保公众安全和客户成功重返社会。如此复杂的工作角色伴随着各种压力源，包括身体威胁和情感疲惫。为了成为干预措施的有效提供机制，PPO-客户关系需要PPO刻意培养，而PPO压力会阻碍这些努力。该项目将有助于了解如何减少累犯并促进数百万前罪犯重新融入社会，从而减少与重新监禁和重新融入社会失败有关的社会成本。由于旨在使前罪犯重新融入社会的刑事司法干预都涉及提供干预的代理人与客户之间的个人关系，因此该项目有助于解决更大、更广泛的问题，即代理人的压力如何影响代理人与客户的关系，从而影响干预的成功。该项目将加强学术界和机构之间的伙伴关系，为实践提供信息，并促进来自代表性不足群体的学生参与具有高度政策相关性的跨学科研究的发展。本研究采用生物社会学的视角，探讨PPO应激和PPO-客户关系对患者预后的影响。他们将采用并行的多方法面板设计，每6个月从乔治亚州社区监管局（DCS）的150个PPOs及其750个高风险客户中收集数据，共4波。研究人员将从PPOs收集唾液样本（用于压力生物标志物）和调查数据（用于自我报告压力源和ppo -客户关系）；根据机构记录构建案主重返社会和再犯的结果。ppo -客户关系的客观衡量将通过观察员对ppo -客户互动录像的评分得出，这是DCS常规数据收集的一部分。研究人员还将探索使用新技术的效用，该技术实现了一种广泛使用的面部编码系统，以处理客户在互动过程中的情绪面部表情，作为关系质量的代理。本文将使用具有滞后结果的多层结构方程模型来解决研究问题。研究结果将填补关于PPO压力对客户再犯和重返社会结果影响的重大知识空白，并产生关于有效提供刑事司法干预机制的知识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Nearly 3.9 million adults are under probation and parole (i.e., community supervision) in the United States, more than double the incarcerated population. About one-third of the prison population are persons on community supervision at the time of the event leading to their reincarceration. Probation and parole officers (PPOs) are the frontline workers in community supervision and are important agents of change for client outcomes. This project studies PPO-related factors, specifically PPO stress and PPO-client relationship that can inform interventions targeted at PPOs to better prepare them to improve community supervision outcomes. A high-quality PPO-client relationship is considered one of the Core Correction Practices, highlighting the prominent position of the PPO-client relationship in practice and its importance as the delivery mechanism for interventions. PPOs assume dual roles of law enforcer and social worker to ensure public safety and clients’ successful reentry. With such complex job roles come with various stressors including physical threats and emotion exhaustion. To be an effective delivery mechanism for interventions, the PPO-client relationship requires deliberate cultivation by PPOs, and PPO stress can impede these efforts. This project will contribute to the knowledge of how to reduce recidivism and facilitate the reintegration of the millions of former offenders, outcomes that, in turn, would reduce societal costs linked to reincarceration and failure of reintegration. As criminal justice interventions aiming to reintegrate former offenders all involve personal relationships between an agent who delivers the intervention and a client, this project contributes to the larger and broader issue of how the agent's stress affects the agent-client relationship and, consequently, the intervention's success. The project will increase partnership between academia and agency to inform practice and promote the development of students from underrepresented groups to engage in interdisciplinary research of high policy relevance. The researchers adopt a biosocial perspective to investigate the impact of PPO stress and PPO-client relationship on clients’ outcomes. They will use a concurrent multi-method panel design and gather data from 150 PPOs and their 750 high-risk clients in the Georgia Department of Community Supervision (DCS) every 6 months for 4 waves. The researchers will collect saliva samples (for stress biomarkers) and survey data (for self-report stressor sources and PPO-client relationships) from PPOs; construct the clients' reintegration and recidivism outcomes from agency records. Objective measure of PPO-client relationship will be derived by observer ratings from video recordings of PPO-client interactions, part of DCS's routine data collection. The researchers will also explore the utility of using novel technology that implements a widely used facial coding system to process clients' facial expressions of emotions during interactions as a proxy for relationship quality. Multilevel structural equation modeling with lagged outcomes will be used to address the research questions. Findings will fill in a significant knowledge gap regarding the effect of PPO stress on clients’ recidivism and reintegration outcomes and generate knowledge regarding effective delivery mechanisms for criminal justice intervention.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.