Gender-Responsive Probation During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Learning from Justice-Involved Women and Their Supervising Officers

ABSTRACT

In the Spring of 2020, the COVID19 pandemic forced community corrections agencies to adapt their day-to-day processes for supervising individuals and maintaining public safety. These forced adaptations allowed the authors to explore how these changes (i.e., tele-supervision) impacted women and those who supervised them at a probation agency in a large metropolitan county in a Western U.S. state. To date, limited research surrounds how COVID-related adaptations impacted gender-responsive, or women-centered, community supervision caseloads. To address this gap in the literature, the current study utilizes a qualitative approach to explore the experiences of 17 community corrections staff and clients on gender-responsive probation supervision during the pandemic. Their narratives suggest both positive outcomes (e.g., accessibility, reducing tendencies to over-supervise) and challenges (e.g., accountability, lacking a relational component) with tele-supervision and tele-treatment models. It is critical to utilize the lived experiences of those directly impacted by COVID-related changes, including community corrections staff and clients, to help shape gender-responsive supervision moving forward.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender-responsivity
• community supervision
• probation
• COVID-19 pandemic

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge all the dedicated staff at the gender-responsive supervision office that made this research possible. Lastly, we would also like to thank all the women on supervision who were willing to share their experiences and stories with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See, Bloom et al. (2003) for a comprehensive review of the principles of gender-responsive strategies: (1) acknowledge that gender matters, (2) create an environment based on safety and respect, (3) develop approaches and practices that are relational in nature, (4) provision of comprehensive services to address gendered needs, (5) improve social and economic conditions, and (6) utilize community-based services and supervise to provide collaborative and comprehensive services.

2. The difference in length between the staff and client interviews was due to staff interview guides being longer due to questions such as their work experience and questions about the more extensive RCT study (e.g., the conceptualization of gender-responsive work, training in gender-responsivity, barriers to the model implementation).

3. This decision was made to increase reliability of the study by having a separate party (e.g., not a person who collected the data) analyze the study. Additionally, this person was highly trained in qualitative analysis.

4. For examples of cultural competency among tele-health, see, Hilty et al. (2020), Magnus et al. (2020), Muttitt et al. (2004), and Yellowlees et al. (2008).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Office of Justice Programs, Award Number: [2017-CZ-BX-0002].