The Tailored Needs of Probation

Probation, like prison, is an exceptionally blunt tool for the enhancement of public safety. One of the real ironies of many studies into the prison and probation system is how they measure success by the rate of rearrest. It seems an obvious metric; the lower the rate of rearrest, the better the system. The logic at play here, however, isn’t exactly bulletproof. I suppose there are very few social scientific instruments that could possibly measure how the system might succeed by intervening in a probationer’s life before s/he gets to the point of another encounter with law enforcement and handcuffs. There is a kind of success that would be a preemptive intervention. The statistics seem to assume that those who don’t get arrested again avoid police interaction because of the way the justic e system has done its job. There may be some truth the that someplace in all the individual cases, but it’s a bit too post hoc ergo propter hoc (that is, “Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X.”) to convince me. Maybe the probationer manages his/her life well despite being subject to the justice system. Perhaps s/he isn’t “criminally inclined” at all; a single conviction does not bespeak a pattern of lawlessness in either the past or the future. And certainly correlation doesn’t always bespeak causation. In the present world of metrics, however, sometimes it’s best just to pretend. I believe in data, but I don’t buy into the current clichĂ© of the “data driven” and “evidence based” because it’s the interpretation of data and evidence that creates any sense of meaning, not data themselves. It’s incumbent on human beings, with all out biases, to draw conclusions from evidence, to put data together as if it were a puzzle. The Word is not self-evident. Were I an evangelist, this is likely the gospel I would preach, but for now I can just impotently comment on the cultural trend.

Anyway, I understand that the public wants to monitor us dangerous felons once we are out from behind the razor wire. I’m not especially upset by the fact of this, though I do sometimes get annoyed at the arbitrariness of it. For instance, why do some people get lifetime probation/supervision for crimes that might seem relatively common (and occasionally even rational) compared to others who get minimal terms of supervision for things most people would find far more heinous? But such is the varied judgment of judges, and until I take up a seat on the Supreme Court of a committee chairmanship in Congress, I am, again, just the peanut gallery. I also understand that even when an instrument to try to predict recidivism is blunt, somebody has to shape it into an instrument in the first place. What I’m really interested in in this post is the set of assumptions that goes into a survey designed to predict somebody’s “danger level.” According to the United States Sentencing Commission, the survey we probationers are given to fill out “is designed to assess the following eight thinking styles hypothesized to support and maintain criminal activity.” I’ve mentioned this set of presumptions before, and I’m sure to mention them again, though I won’t break them down individually today. I’ll just note that, according to the same document I cited above, the USSC says, “The majority of the persons under federal supervision fall into the Low or Low/Moderate categories” in terms of the risk of reoffending. I’m uncertain whether that means that prison has “done its job” or whether that means that prison may have been by and large unnecessary in the first place, but that’s exactly where that pesky interpretation comes in. It’s an interesting debate to have, providing that the various interpretations are ably represented.

I’m also interested in how we might interpret the questions posed by this survey (called the PCRA Offender Section), when we think about context. Here’s an example of what I mean, based on the first inquiry on the questionnaire. Question #1: “I will allow nothing to get in the way of my getting what I want.” Nothing? Well, there is probably something that most people won’t do to get what they want, yet I’m intrigued by how this places good old ambition as a marker of “criminogenic thinking” (their jargon, not mine). I mean millions of people love Donald Trump because he espouses this kind of line; The Donald made a whole TV series based on this idea. Lots of capitalists, both real and fictional, have been lauded for this kind of attitude. I’ve heard it said that every President of the United States who ever existed fell into this kind of category. I’ve heard Ivy League valedictorians give this kind of speech on Commencement Day when explaining how they became valedictorian. To me a “strongly agree” answer to this query is pretty damned scary, but in the context of the American Dream, it’s also a weird kind of ideal.

Question #10 of the survey is: “I occasionally think of things too horrible to talk about.” The ironist in me simply asks this: IF they are too horrible for me to talk about, why would I talk about them or admit that in this context? I mean, isn’t somebody going to follow up on that question if I “strongly agree”? Yet here is another place where a missing context comes into fascinating play for me. Talk about to whom? You mean in “polite” company? Something like not saying racist things out loud? Or just saying them around other people I’m positive are avowed racists? Or what about things that get “said” on the internet? There’s really nothing too horrible to say on the internet; the evidence, I think, is pretty solid on that. As for things “unspeakably” horrible, we are pretty much at the point, in a mass mediated society, where just keeping up with the news gets the unspeakable screamed at you all day, every day. So maybe I’m a niggling perfectionist about language, but I think language matters here. I think the question really wants to get at whether I think about doing things that are too horrible to talk about. Am I thinking about ways to carry out the unspeakable? I’m not a psychiatrist, but I still cling to some notion, misguided or not, that there is a pretty bringt line between thinking and doing. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent a lot of time with fiction during the course of a lifetime. For all the people who get horribly murdered in books, I just can’t imagine that the authors really have many intentions of carrying out such killings. They sure are good at imagining them, however.

Question #11: “I’m afraid of losing my mind.” Spend some time in prison and see how you answer this one.

#18: “I find myself arguing with others over relatively trivial matters.” Sayre’s law says: “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.” There is a corollary: “The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low.” And a related axiom: “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Presumably the writers of this questionnaire came from an academic background and had families, but maybe not.

#25: “Despite the criminal life I have led, deep down I am basically a good person.” OK, so to answer this I really have to grant their premise and say I have led a “criminal life,” which makes it seems as if felonies were something that dominated my very existence. Sorry guys, but that’s not really how it works. One can commit crimes but not have a criminal life, but the premise of the question reveals quite a bit about how and why we have such a fucked up justice system. Second, wouldn’t any good psychologist want us to differentiate between what we have done and who we are? It’s all shame based in this example. If you have done a bad thing, then you are a bad person. Perhaps the questionnaire wants to get at the level of shame a probationer feels, but I really don;t think it’s that good or sophisticated.

#30: “I tend to let things go which should probably be attended to, based on my belief that they will work themselves out.” Criminogenic? Maybe. But also the motto of bureaucrats everywhere. Indeed it’s the very ethos of bureaucracy. Plus, ask any employer about her employees. Have fun finding your own examples.

#32: “I have made mistakes in life.” Seriously? I someone strongly disagreed with this, I would think it was a joke.

#62: “I tend to be rather easily sidetracked so that I rarely finish what I start.” So, from my anecdotal observations, I would say that prisons are filled with a fair number of folks who could get diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, but then I look outside the razor wire and see an entire industry based on both trying to cure this (often by the use of “good” drugs) while competing with an industry that profits by inducing it (smart phones and their eternal, obnoxious “notifications”.

#65: “I believe that I am a special person and that my situation deserves special attention.” Well, here’s a cultural moment. Are we all special or is nobody special? Are we all drones subject to identical treatment or should we be evaluated in our lives on an individual basis? My ironist can’t leave well enough alone on this: The US government, with all its rhetoric about individualism, might actually think that individualism isn’t such a great thing after all. Seems about right to me.

#71: “I have told myself that I would never have had to engage in crime if I had a good job.” Calling Victor Hugo. Yes, he’s fictional, but how would Jean Valjean answer this? Moreover, is there really no relationship between economic factors and crime? I haven’t cited the many examples of this kind of thinking in this survey, but one of the fascinating themes that runs through its presumptions and premises is a clear distinction between what Cormel West called in his book Race Matters the distinction between liberal structuralists and conservative behaviorists. That is, back in the 1990s West astutely identified a tendency to think in simplistic binary terms about complex human behavior and then politicize the binary. Liberal behaviorists say (and I mean this somewhat parodically): “It’s all ‘society’s’ fault. We are all determined by the social environment.” Conservative behaviorists say (again pardoically): “It’s all a choice you make. Rich/poor. Guilty/Innocent. That’s all up to you and only you.” As you can see — and as West certainly saw — neither position is especially insightful or accurate. However, if you engage with the criminal justice system, you will see that the conservative behaviorist position is the one that felons are more or less required to subscribe to if they want high marks from prison officials. I made bad choices. I did bad things. I deserve what I got. I’m unclear on how that keeps people from becoming recidivists, but it is fairly understandable why the justice system would want to inculcate that into its wards. It absolves the system itself of any part in bad outcomes (even if the system can live with the cognitive dissonance inherent in claiming credit for the “good” outcomes.)

If I complete my sentence and probation and don;t get busted for anything else, does that mean that the system worked? Or maybe I should really get the most (or only) credit for staying crime-free? Whatever the case, I am asked to start from the premise that I’m a dangerous person who is bound to lead a life of consistent crime. Whether is system is useful or useless in transforming me is a question that only time and statistics can tell.

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