Substance Use and Peer Associations: How Relationships Between Women on Community Supervision and Their Supervising Officers Matter

• Published date: 01 July 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00938548241237193
• Author: Marcus Tyler Carey,Kyle Curtis Mueller
• Date: 01 July 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2024, Vol. 51, No. 7, July 2024, 1072 –1089.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548241237193

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2024 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

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SUBSTANCE USE AND PEER ASSOCIATIONS

How Relationships Between Women on Community

Supervision and Their Supervising Officers Matter

MARCUS TYLER CAREY

Texas A&M International University

KYLE CURTIS MUELLER

Harris County Juvenile Probation Department

The growth in the population of women on probation and/or parole has prompted the need for research that examines static and

dynamic risk predictors for recidivism among them, particularly substance use and negative peer associations. Using a longitu-

dinal study of 402 drug-involved and justice-involved women on probation/parole in 16 Michigan counties, this study employed

the Dual-Role Relationship Inventory—Short Form (DRI-SF) and personal characteristics to examine how the perceptions of

women under community supervision regarding their supervising officers correlated to risks for substance use and negative peer

associations. We found those perceptions to be robust predictors of substance use and negative peer associations among our

sample. The dynamics of that correlation are discussed, as are implications for practice.

Keywords: substance use; women; community corrections; probation; parole

Community supervision is the most used sanction in US corrections (Morash et al., 2016),

yet its clients often fail to complete their periods of supervision due to either a technical

violation or because of committing a new offense. Approximately, 32% of clients on com-

munity supervision do not complete their terms successfully (Blasko & Taxman, 2018).

While the success of clients on community supervision contributes to public safety and can

improve the lives of the clientele themselves, failures contribute to problems of mass incar-

ceration and can undermine the life chances of clients and their families. This is especially

troubling from the standpoint of women on community supervision, a population that

accounts for approximately 80% of all women involved in the criminal justice system

AUTHORS’ NOTE: This was a secondary data analysis, the data for which were originally funded by a

National Science Foundation grant. These data were then made publicly available on ICPSR, which was how

we acquired it. Portions of the findings were presented at the 2023 American Society of Criminology Annual

Meeting in Philadelphia, PA, United States. We do not have any conflicts of interest. Correspondence concern-

ing this article should be addressed to Marcus Tyler Carey, Department of Social Sciences, Texas A&M

International University, 5201 University Boulevard, Laredo, TX 78041. e-mail: marcus.carey@tamiu.edu.

1237193CJBXXX10.1177/00938548241237193Criminal Justice and BehaviorCarey and Mueller / Women on Community Supervision

research-article2024

Carey and Mueller / WOMEN ON COMMUNITY SUPERVISIOR 1073

(Wilfong et al., 2021). Furthermore, women on probation and/or parole comprise a large

population of justice system clients, with more than 800,000 as of 2021 (Sawyer & Wagner,

2023).

Probation and parole are among the most prominent and common versions of com-

munity corrections and are therefore of enormous importance to justice-involved women

in the U.S. Further, the operation of probation and parole is complicated by the special

circumstances of women within systems that have been criticized as male-centric

(Vasilescu, 2022). Such criticisms stem in large part from the suggestion that the path-

ways to crime and desistance of justice-involved women differ meaningfully from those

of men in similar circumstances, and there is ample evidence to support this (Reisig

et al., 2006). For example, women are more often abused, both sexually and otherwise,

by family members, romantic partners, and acquaintances, and 90% of victims of sexual

assault are women (Archer, 2019). This can lead to criminality stemming from flight

away from that abuse, as well as leading women to becoming unhoused and turning to

crime as a means of survival on the streets (Gottlieb & Mahabir, 2022). Women might

also be more criminally influenced by romantic partners than are men, and this is one

way in which social networks may operate uniquely for women (Welle & Falkin, 2000).

If the antecedents to crime are different for women than for men, it stands to reason that

best practices in community corrections might differ by gender as well (Fedock &

Covington, 2017).

For example, gender-responsive programming has proliferated in recent years, notably

including the development of risk assessment tools designed to be less male-centric and to

account for the gendered pathways to crime that justice-involved women are thought by

some to take (Kruttschnitt et al., 2019). This has potential implications for how best to serve

women in community corrections, such as by prioritizing the building of better relation-

ships and enhancing communication skills (Duwe & Clark, 2015). Some research also sug-

gests that an emphasis on more conventional antecedents to crime such as finances might

be more beneficial to women. This would make sense, owing in part to the often-diminished

financial power of women relative to men in the United States (Gharehgozli & Atal, 2020)

and elsewhere.

Relatedly, the current research seeks to inform practice in community corrections from

the perspective of the relationships that supervising officers cultivate with women under

their care, a body of research that has received substantial attention in recent years

(Holmstrom et al., 2018; Roddy & Morash, 2020; Smith et al., 2016). Probation and parole

officers are thought to occupy a “dual role,” which refers to the coexisting but potentially

competing obligations to protect public safety (such as through client surveillance) and to

provide care to their clients (Gochyyev & Skeem, 2019; Skeem et al., 2007). The duality

inherent to the function of probation and parole officers also manifests in competing styles,

roughly corresponding to authoritarian or rehabilitative tendencies (DeMichele & Payne,

2018). The more authoritarian approach has been described as a “law enforcer” style,

whereas a rehabilitative bent is consistent with a “social worker” approach (Miller, 2015;

Skeem & Manchak, 2008). There is a practical need for probation and parole officers to

have a capacity for both, and officers who strike a balance between authoritarian and reha-

bilitative communication styles are described as “synthetic” (Miller, 2015; Skeem &

Manchak, 2008).