Community Corrections: Meta-Analysis

This article addresses the different ways probation supervision effects an inmate. It also looks at the ways different ways community corrections effect recidivism with young offenders. Early on in the article it talks about meta-analysis. Meta-analysis provides a different way of reviewing empirical literature or in laymen’s terms it is a way to find results of several results and reviewing them in a timely manner. By using the meta- analysis, it has been made clear to those doing the research that some practices in corrections do in fact work. A study done by Andrews et al in 1990 proved that some effective approaches are characterized by certain principles. It is suggested by this study that those principles include criminogenic needs and

Unfortunately, the study done in this article as well as other studies done have yet to prove if empathy or having a relationship with the inmates does in fact make a difference in lower recidivism.
The study done in this article used thirty different community corrections officers that took a five-day training course, which included using the pro-social model, problem solving, and empathy. The pro-social approach comes from learning theory. It is described as a voluntary behavior that is intended to benefit someone else. These benefits can be as small as a praise of an inmate or as big as a monetary reward. Many of these rewards are noted in their files so that, if they are passed off to another officer or if they do in fact end up back incarcerated, the new officers know what works for the one

Empathy involves the officer being understanding towards the inmate rather then refusing to see it from their point of view. The “research” that is presented in this article for empathy is just file notes that are written by officers. They were instructed to make note of ways they had showed empathy towards the inmates.
The result of this study shows a very strong relationship between the use of the pro-social model and recidivism. The file notes indicated that there wasn’t a significant difference with using the pro-social model with low risk offenders and high-risk offenders. The problem solving approach did, however, show a bigger difference with the high-risk offenders. Empathy, on the other hand, did not show much difference when used towards the inmates.
One thing noted in the conclusion is that it is hard to tell if each of these three factors would make a difference by themselves, or if in fact when used as a whole they do impact the recidivism rates because they interact with each other so often. What is clear though; the pro-social approach does lower recidivism rates. The use of problem solving also showed lower recidivism when looked at over a period of four years rather then seeing it right away. Unfortunately, with empathy, it isn’t supported by the study that it has an effect with the corrections system. There are notes made in the files that empathy was expressed for the inmates but it is apparent