< Previous10 PERSPECTIVES VOLUME 44, NUMBER 4 We seek to create a system of community justice where: A full range of sanctions and services provides public safety by insuring humane, effective and individualized sentences for offenders and support and protection for victims; Primary prevention initiatives are cultivated through our leadership and guidance; Our communities are empowered to own and participate in solutions; Results are measured and direct our service delivery; Dignity and respect describe how each person is treated; Staff are empowered and supported in an environment of honesty, inclusion and respect for differences; and Partnerships with stakeholders lead to shared ownership of our vision. The American Probation and Parole Association is an affiliate of and receives its secretariat services from The Council of State Governments (CSG). CSG, the multibranch association of the states and U.S. territories, works with state leaders across the nation and through its regions to put the best ideas and solutions into practice. BOARD OF DIRECTORS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Tim D. Hardy President Brian Lovins President-Elect Susan Rice Vice President Tom Gregory Treasurer Joseph Russo Secretary Gene Cotter At-Large Member Alisha James At-Large Member Francine Perretta At-Large Member Erika Preuitt Immediate Past-President Veronica Ballard Cunningham Executive Director PRODUCTION STAFF Veronica Cunningham Editor in Chief Kimberly Kras Perspectives Co-Editor Jason Stauffer Perspectives Co-Editor Nathan Lowe Production Coordinator Julie Pelstring Designer Aaron Burch Copy Editor SERVICES DIRECTORY General (859) 244-8000 Publication Orders (859) 244-8204 General Training Institute (859) 244-8204 Information Clearinghouse (859) 244-8204 Membership (859) 244-8212 Request for Training (859) 244-8057 Resource Expo (859) 244-8206 Advertising (859) 244-8212 Communications should be addressed to: American Probation and Parole Association c/o The Council of State Governments 1776 Avenue of the States, Lexington, KY, 40511 Fax: (859) 244-8001, E-mail: Website: Perspectives is published four times annually by the American Probation and Parole Association through its secretariat office in Lexington, Kentucky. ISSN 0821-1507 Reprint permission. Direct requests for permission to use material published in Perspectives in writing to © 2020 The Council of State Governments12 PERSPECTIVES VOLUME 44, NUMBER 4 Geo Care Monica Hook Marketing Communications Director 621 NW 53rd Street, Suite 700 Boca Raton, FL 33487 Phone: (800) 241.2911 x 1230 Intoxalock Linda Vadel Affiliate Marketing Coordinator 11035 Aurora Avenue Des Moines, IA 50322 Phone: (515) 251.3747 LifeSafer Pete Andrews National Director of Business Development 215 Southport Drive, Suite 400 Morrisville, NC 27560 Phone: (919) 280.6846 Micro Distributing Roy G. Whiteside, Jr. Vice President Micro Distributing II, Ltd. PO Box 1753 620 Kennedy Court Belton, TX 76513 Primary: (254) 939-8923 Office: (254) 939-5867 National Curriculum and Training Institute Gary Bushkin President 319 East McDowell Road, Suite 200 Phoenix, AZ 85004-1534 Phone: (602) 252.3100 Noble Software Diana Norris President 1320 Yuba Street, Suite 212 Redding, CA 96001 Phone: (979) 248.6568 Promise Diana Frappier Chief Legal Officer 436 14th Street, Ste 920 Oakland, CA 94612 Phone: (415) 305.4560 Email: diana@joinpromise Attenti Kerri Ryan Director of Marketing and Business Development 1838 Gunn Highway Odessa, FL 33556 Phone: (813) 749.5454 x 1275 Email: averhealth Justin Manni Director of Business Development 1700 Bayberry Court, Suite 105 Richmond, VA 23226 Phone: (848) 992.3650 Email: Cordico Brady Pilster Director of Business Development 2377 Gold Meadow Way, Suite 100 Gold River, CA 95670 Phone: (844) 267-3426 CoreCivic Shannon Carst Managing Director 5501 Virginia Way Ste 110 Brentwood, TN 37027 Phone: 303-842-8301 Email: Corrections Software Solutions James Redus President 316 North Lamar Street Austin, TX 78703 Phone: (512) 347.1366 Fax: (512) 347.1310 Email: Corrisoft Susan Harrod VP, Sales & Marketing Corrisoft 1648 McGrathiana Pkwy, Suite 225 Lexington, KY 40511 Phone: (217) 899.5323 Equivant Caryn Shaw 1764 Forest Ridge Drive Suite A Traverse City, MI 49686 Phone: (330) 470-0618 Fax: (330) 494-2483 Email: Corporations with an interest in the field of probation, parole, and community corrections are invited to become APPA corporate members. Corporate members receive benefits such as enhanced visibility among APPA’s international network of community corrections professionals, as well as shared information on the latest trends and issues that specifically affect community corrections. APPA CORPORATE MEMBERS13 AMERICAN PROBATION AND PAROLE ASSOCIATION APPA ASSOCIATE MEMBERS AdventFS Daniel Flick Sales Manager 2927 Ring Road Elizabethtown, KY, 42701 Phone: (270) 209.0422 Buddi Limited Steve Chapin Chief Location Luminary 2710 Alt 19 North Palm Harbor, FL 34683 Phone: (727) 560.8432 Precision Kiosk Technologies David Kreitzer General Manager 2855 Country Drive, Suite 100 Little Canada, MN 55117 Phone: (651) 383.1213 Reconnect, Inc Sam Hotchkiss Founder & CEO 1 Faraday Drive Cumberland, Maine 04021 Email: SCRAM Systems Jennifer Mill Marketing Manager 1241 West Mineral Avenue Littleton, CO 80120 Phone: (303) 785.7828 Email: Securus Technologies Jose Andrade Vice President, Sales 14651 Dallas Parkway, Suite 600 Dallas, TX 75254 Phone: (800) 844.6591 Email: Shadowtrack Robert L. Magaletta ShadowTrack Technologies, Inc. Cypress Bend Office Building 1001 Ochsner Blvd., Ste. 425A Covington, LA 70433 Office: (985) 867.3771 Ext 120 Sierra Wireless / Omnilink Thomas McKay Senior Marketing Manager Omnilink 400 Interstate North Pkwy Suite 900 Atlanta, GA 30339 Phone: (877) 687-7795 Smart Start, Inc. Michelle H. Whitaker Conference and Promotions Coordinator 500 East Dallas Road Grapevine, TX 76051 Phone: (919) 604.2513 Email: The Change Companies Jesse Tillotson National Director of Justice Services 5221 Sigstrom Drive Carson City, NV 89706 Phone: (888) 889.8866 Email: Track Group Matthew Swando VP of Sales and Marketing 1215 North Lakeview Court Romeoville, IL 60446 Phone: (877) 260.2010 Email: TRACKtech Ben Williams Vice President - Business Development 6295 Greenwood Plaza Blvd, Suite 100 Greenwood Village, CO 80111 Phone: (303) 834-7519 Email: Tyler Technologies Larry Stanton Director of Sales - Courts & Justice 5101 Tennyson Parkway Plano, TX 75024 Phone: (904) 654.3741 Email: Uptrust Susan Rice Director of Community Supervision Partnerships 1 Sutter Street, Suite 350 San Francisco, CA 94104 765-469-1593 Vant4ge Sean Hosman National Sales Leader – Public Sector Vant4ge P.O. Box 802 Salt Lake City, UT 84110 Phone: (877) 744-136014 PERSPECTIVES VOLUME 44, NUMBER 4 PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE AMONG COMMUNITY SUPERVISION AGENCIES BY: HOLLY SWAN, PH.D., WALTER CAMPBELL, PH.D., NATHAN LOWE, PH.D.15 AMERICAN PROBATION AND PAROLE ASSOCIATION THE IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC ON COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on community correctionsw—from policing to reentry—has been profound (Chapman, Irazola, & Swan, 2020). Appropriately, much of the focus in media and scholarly outlets has been on the impact of the pandemic on prisons and incarcerated populations (Akiyama, Spaulding, & Rich, 2020; Busanksy, 2020; Burki, 2020; Kinner, et al., 2020; Liebrenz, Bhugra, Buadze, & Schleifer, 2020; Nadel & Campbell, 2020; Yang & Thompson, 2020). However, the pandemic has also had direct impact on community supervision agencies and populations. Any changes at other points along the justice continuum will also directly or indirectly impact community supervision. In this paper, we discuss those impacts, how agencies have responded, and factors that have influenced agency responses. The Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Community Supervision With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, community supervision agencies had to rapidly adapt their practices to accommodate the widespread “stay-in-place” and social distancing directives from all levels of government. In essence, the “community” aspect of community supervision abruptly halted. In this context, across society and around the world, increased uptake and use of technology has been critical for conducting operations in all social sectors. However, the ability of community supervision agencies to adopt or scale technological solutions varies widely depending on capabilities within the agencies as well as the community within which they are operating. While already strained community supervision agencies have to adapt to the pandemic, they are bearing the consequences of adaptations at other points along the justice system continuum. For example, efforts by prisons and jails to reduce overcrowding, such as speeding up and increasing releases of individuals in their custody, shift the responsibility of oversight of those individuals to community supervision agencies (Nadel & Campbell, 2020). Many courts have also implemented limitations on the types and frequency of cases they will see to limit their own exposure to the virus and to minimize incarcerations (Chapman et al., 2020). Such changes may be reducing the number of people incarcerated, but individuals are being sentenced to community supervision instead. Similarly, in many jurisdictions, courts are suspending hearings for probation/ parole technical violations. Changes to court procedures have limited the availability of such mechanisms for community supervision officers to use when maintaining public safety (Simmons, 2020; Nadel & Campbell, 2020). Likewise, some of the tools that community supervision officers have to promote rehabilitation among their supervisees (e.g., referrals to treatment or other social services) have been impacted by reductions in already limited capacity and capabilities among community treatment and service providers. In addition to how the agency operates, social responses to the pandemic have disproportionate impacts on the community supervision population. For example, the state of the economy due to the pandemic further restricts the already limited ability of adults on community supervision to obtain employment (Betesh, 2020). When they do get jobs, they often face a disproportionate risk of infection given their higher prevalence of employment in jobs that have continued during the pandemic (e.g., manufacturing, janitorial, and food industries) (Lindquist et al., 2018). Social responses to the pandemic 16 PERSPECTIVES VOLUME 44, NUMBER 4 THE IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC ON COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS have also produced changes in patterns of criminal activity, such as increases in domestic violence (Marbach, 2020), and heightened existing vulnerabilities among individuals who have or are susceptible to substance use disorder (Volkow, 2020). These changes have implications for the role and capacity of community supervision officers who manage domestic violence and other specialized cases within the strained community and agency contexts. Community Supervision Agency Preparedness and Response To understand how community supervision agencies across the country are responding to these impacts, the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA) developed a short survey that was administered to its membership through the APPA members portal on March 25, 2020. The survey asked how agencies have responded to the crisis, how prepared they were for the crisis, and the perceived effectiveness of their response. The survey closed on April 24, 2020. Staff at APPA compiled the collected survey results into an Excel file, de-identified the data, and sent the data to Abt for analysis. Survey Data and Analytic Approach A total of 339 individuals responded to the survey. To obtain accurate information related to agency preparedness and response, it was important to identify respondents from the same agency. The survey asked respondents for the name of their agency and state, and we used this information to identify agencies. When responses to these questions left doubt as to whether two agencies were the same, we erred on the side of assuming responses were for separate agencies. We excluded 21 respondents who indicated they worked for a non-profit or private organization (e.g., provider of electronic monitoring devices), which left a sample of 318 individual respondents. We identified 203 unique agencies from 43 states and the District of Columbia. The responding agencies came from across the United States, with 10.34% of agencies from the Northeast, 39.09% from the Midwest, 21.67% from the South, and 28.08% from the West. Most agencies had local jurisdiction (67.98%), with about a quarter having statewide jurisdiction (26.11%). A few were federal (5.42%), and one respondent had tribal jurisdiction. The respondents themselves were mostly line staff (50.31%), executive management (20.75%), or mid- level management (18.24%), with a few respondents who were administrative (3.46%), program or policy (4.72%), or some other type of staff (2.49%). When responses to a question differed within an agency, we used the most common response when possible and otherwise used the affirmative response. For example, we assumed that when asked whether an agency had implemented Policy Y, and Respondent 1 said “No” or “I Don’t Know” but Respondent 2 said “Yes,” the correct answer for that agency was “Yes.” We believe it is more likely that Respondent 1 either didn’t know about the policy or completed the survey before the policy was in place than that Respondent 2 was falsely reporting implementation of a policy the agency had not implemented. Our analysis consisted of calculating frequencies of survey responses. Agency Preparedness In 2009, APPA published guidelines for community corrections to be prepared for and respond to an influenza pandemic and other emergency crises, such as bioterrorist attacks and natural disasters. The guidelines focused 17 AMERICAN PROBATION AND PAROLE ASSOCIATION THE IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC ON COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS on five areas: planning and decision-making, prevention and detection, human resources, communication, and offender supervision strategies. APPA intended for community corrections agencies, regardless of size and location, to use the guidelines to develop comprehensive plans to effectively respond to pandemics, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, there has been little research about the extent to which agencies used the guidelines over the past decade to develop such plans; some of the survey questions were created with these guidelines in mind to provide some data on their use. As shown in Figure 1, while many agencies had crisis protocols in place before this pandemic, a quarter of them (24%) did not, and respondents from nearly a tenth of agencies (9%) did not know if their agency had crisis protocols in place. Figure 1. Were Crisis Protocols in Place Before this Pandemic? The survey also asked participants to provide open-ended feedback on agency preparedness. Most notably, respondents indicated a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), which officers need when conducting face-to-face contacts. Respondents also indicated feeling particularly vulnerable and felt their agency took a long time to respond to the crisis, which suggests they were not prepared. While many community supervision agencies exhibited some level of preparedness, this pandemic warrants revisiting preparedness guidelines. One respondent noted that their “agency was not ready for this sort of public health crisis. Moving forward, I see leadership focusing on implementing policies to address any future public health pandemics.” Based on the survey data, it seems reasonable to conclude that APPA’s pandemic influenza guidelines were not widely applied by community corrections agencies. Agency Response Agencies responded to this crisis by making a number of changes. Most respondents (70%) felt their agency took adequate precautions, as illustrated in Figure 2. Figure 2. To What Extent Do You Agree that Your Agency Took Adequate Precautions? Nearly all agencies (90%) had some form of teleworking in place; only about half 18 PERSPECTIVES VOLUME 44, NUMBER 4 THE IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC ON COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS (46%) indicated they had adequate resources to do so. A majority of agencies suspended in-office reporting (95%), in-person group activities (87%), and home or field contacts (73%). In addition, many agencies suspended arrests for technical violations (66%) and reported that courts in their jurisdiction suspended hearings (77%). Fewer sites encouraged clients to report off site (59%), and despite the magnitude of these changes, respondents indicated that less than half of the agencies had made any sort of announcement to their clients about the changes or the pandemic (43%) (Figure 3). Figure 3. Did Your Agency Make an Announcement to Your Clients? Many agencies implemented strategies other than or instead of teleworking to minimize spread within the workplace (see Figure 4). The most common strategies included schedule rotations (54%) and staff coverage in the office (49%). Less common were reassigning job duties (18%) and site- based check points (i.e., identified locations for staff to report in at selected dates/times) (6%). Many agencies implemented more than one strategy. Figure 4. What Alternatives to Teleworking has Your Agency Implemented? Respondents found the implementation of many of these changes challenging (see Figure 5). The most noted challenges are not unique to community supervision (personal life impact: 42%; a lack of physical interaction: 37%). However, about a quarter of respondents found the suspension of home and field contacts (27%), suspension of court cases (24%), or the suspension of some violations (24%) to be among their biggest challenges. About a fifth of all respondents reported the lack of communication from agency leadership (17%) and a loss in reporting days (20%) as challenging. In addition, many respondents noted the lack of PPE for community supervision officers and the increased workload as stressors. Many of the actions taken to minimize the spread of the virus in prisons and jails increase the burden on, or even endanger, community supervision officers. As one respondent noted, “mandates for keeping the virus out of the facility come at a cost to us as [front line] employees.”19 AMERICAN PROBATION AND PAROLE ASSOCIATION THE IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC ON COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS Figure 5. What are Some of the Biggest Challenges of This Pandemic? It is not surprising that respondents find these changes challenging. These necessary changes have altered the very core of community supervision. As noted earlier, in- person contact, especially during field work, is a core component of community supervision for many officers that has been suspended as a result of the pandemic. Indeed, among the challenges unique to community supervision, the loss of home and field contacts is the most commonly cited challenge. One respondent noted that before this crisis, face-to-face contact was “85% of our job.” Further, through the suspension of arrests for technical violations and court hearings, one of the key tools of the profession has been removed, as officers can no longer use these deterrents in response to negative client behavior. Another key tool of the profession, referral to or practicing group therapeutic activities, has also ceased in many agencies. As one respondent noted, the two biggest challenges of the pandemic are being “unable to hold offenders accountable for their behavior and not able to provide treatment programming.” One other major outcome of this pandemic is the increased use of technology, not only as a virtual office space where meetings can occur but also as a way in which to stay in contact with clients. As a respondent said, “The current situation has caused us to implement technology that had been available previously but not implemented.” One respondent noted that, in the rural area where the person works, this change may be beneficial for clients who previously had to drive long distances to report but can now do so virtually. A few respondents said they believe that their clients feel more supported because of the telephone and virtual contacts, as it allows officers to check in more often. Conclusion Unfortunately, current research provides us with only a limited understanding of what the short- and long-term impacts of these changes might be on community corrections. Home and field contacts are an understudied area of community supervision, but the few studies that do exist suggest there are benefits to their use (Abt Associates, 2019; Alarid & Rangel, 2018; Meredith, Hawk, Johnson, Prevost, & Braucht, 2020). Thus, the lack of field contacts may hinder success for current supervisees. There has been little research about the impact of reducing arrests for technical violations. Revocations for technical violations, such as violating a curfew, make up a large share of the revocations within community supervision. However, very little research speaks to the impact of the use of revocations for technical violations on other important outcomes, such as recommission of crime (Grattet & Lin, 2016; Osterman, Hyatt, & DeWitt, 2019). Similarly, little is known about the relative effectiveness of virtual contacts when compared with more traditional office or field contacts. While some research Next >