Merry Morash,Women on Probation and Parole: A Feminist Critique of Community Programs & Services

Merry Morash, Women on Probation and Parole: A Feminist Critique of Community Programs & Services, Northeastern University Press: Boston, MA, 2010; 183 pp. (including index): 10:1555537200, $24.95 (pbk)

Women on Probation and Parole compares gender-responsive and traditional approaches to community supervision of women using data collected between 1997 and 1999 on 369 women from two neighboring counties in a northwestern US state. The first, which Morash calls ‘Gender Responsive County’, provides gender-responsive supervision designed to address ‘a wide range of needs unique or common to women offenders’ (p. 3) and the second, which she calls ‘Traditional County’, provides women with the same basic supervision offered to men. Although the book offers a well-written, detailed comparison of the experiences of women in the two counties, lack of clarity about the criteria for, and definitions of, ‘success’ make it difficult to draw conclusions about the effects of gender-responsive supervision. This ambiguity highlights the disagreement within the field of community supervision, and criminal justice more broadly, about what is both desirable and possible to accomplish.

Morash nicely incorporates prior feminist critiques of gender-responsive corrections into her research questions, which focus not only on comparing women’s experiences and outcomes in the two counties, but also on assessing the unintended effects of gender-responsive intervention, namely whether it results in gender stereotyping or enhanced control and incarceration. Morash originally intended to compare outcomes from the two counties quantitatively, but she realized that doing so would not reveal the complex distinctions between the different approaches. Therefore, she organized multiple sources of data (including interviews with the women on probation and parole, supervising officers’ case notes and survey responses, and official arrest records) into qualitative case studies, which she used to inductively compare supervision in the two counties.

Morash characterizes the supervision in Gender Responsive County as broad and intense, powerfully applying both law enforcement and social casework approaches. Supervising officers provide extensive monitoring and contact, often overriding the risk level determined by the state risk assessment instrument because of women’s many needs. At the same time, they offer help and referrals for these multiple needs, providing wraparound services constituting a continuum of care and an attempt to develop trusting relationships with the women they supervise. In contrast, supervision in Traditional County is limited and narrow, providing less law enforcement and social casework. Supervising officers offer infrequent contact, show little concern about drug use as long as women do not reoffend, and often chronicle women’s problems in case notes without attempting to intervene.

As this description reveals, supervising officers in the two counties have different goals. In Traditional County, they try to move women to the lowest level of supervision or eliminate supervision as quickly as possible, while in Gender Responsive County they try to discover the causes of illegal behavior, to connect women with resources, and thus to keep ‘women law abiding and in the community by meeting their needs’ (p. 7). With different goals, they necessarily have different definitions of success. Morash’s discussion highlights this incongruence and reflects a commitment developed through her research to look beyond statistics to clarify the processes of change. In the introduction to the book, she states, ‘Ultimately, the question is whether gender-responsive supervision puts women in prisons and jails, or helps keep them in the community’ (p. 7). However, in the conclusion she argues that ‘[s]anctions of jail and incarceration are imprecise indicators of failure’, as they have the potential to become ‘positive turning points’ (p. 147).

Morash likely makes this latter statement to provide context for similar rates of failure in the two counties, which she defines as an offender having ended the year absconded, incarcerated, or having committed a new offense. Unfortunately, she neither distinguishes between these types of failure nor provides precise statistics on recidivism and incarceration. Instead she states that ‘greater numbers of substance-centered women in Gender Responsive County were in and out of jail for brief sanctions’ but that ‘gender-responsive supervision did not result in women’s spending more time in jail and prison’ (p. 147). It would have been helpful if she had provided the actual numbers so that readers could assess for themselves the significance of these similarities and differences. (She does suggest, however, the potential for underestimated failure rates in Traditional County due to undetected drug use, as well as for inflated rates in Gender Responsive County due to enhanced monitoring.)

Clearly, Morash faced methodological challenges, in that she was only able to follow the women for one year. Perhaps the counties have longer-term differences in recidivism or length of incarceration. However, the challenges are also philosophical, reflecting disagreement and confusion within the field about the goals of community supervision and of the criminal justice system overall. Two-thirds of the women on probation and parole in these two counties were there for what Morash terms substance-centered offenses, so debates about the criminalization of substance use and punishment versus rehabilitation, as well as over how best to prevent recidivism and whether treatment is possible in involuntary contexts are particularly relevant.

Morash attributes failure in Gender Responsive County to women’s choices and gaps in needed resources and programs, while in Traditional County she blames supervision tactics (see p. 84). This exemplifies one of Hannah-Moffat’s (2001) critiques of gender-responsive corrections: while traditional strategies of rehabilitation place responsibility for individuals’ reform on the State, empowerment approaches make the individual responsible for herself. If she ‘chooses’ not to change, ‘she is constructed as being in denial or as defiant and uncooperative, and therefore more risky’ (Hannah-Moffat, 2001: 174). Given how women’s needs are used to justify increased monitoring and control in Gender Responsive County, it is evident that both women’s choices and their victimization (often portrayed as the source of their needs) contribute to their being labeled ‘risky’.

Despite acknowledging the conflation of needs and risks as a potential problem within gender-responsive corrections (see Hannah-Moffat, 2001, 2004), Morash dismisses the problem in this case. She does not incorporate literature that questions who is defining women’s needs (e.g. whether it is more about risk reduction and ‘intervenability’ than what a woman thinks she needs; see Hannah-Moffat, 2005). In this context, the supervising officers determine what a woman’s needs are and use these determinations to justify enhanced control. Morash begins her project by asking whether gender-responsive supervision increases control over women, but she answers a very different question about whether this increased control is worth it. She concludes that ‘greater controls contributed to the women’s leaving very destructive situations and making positive changes’ (p. 147). Thus, Morash justifies the increased control because it is offered in conjunction with increased treatment and assistance. Given who she is talking about – marginalized women who are disproportionately poor and women of color – this raises questions of fairness, as more privileged women with substance abuse problems can access treatment without justice system involvement. More privileged women struggling with addiction are also much less likely to end up on probation and parole once engaged with the criminal justice system; in addition, their resources often enable them to acquire substances without engaging in other illegal behaviors.

In sum, it seems that gender-responsive supervision can provide assistance otherwise unavailable to many women. Yet, it links resources and treatment with oversight and control in a way that raises important questions about the possibilities for treatment in an involuntary context, the wisdom of current policy criminalizing substance abuse, the net-widening effects of providing assistance through the criminal justice system while limiting it in other contexts, and the goals of the criminal justice system. Women on Probation and Parole makes a pragmatic argument about providing women on probation and parole with the best possible services and provides an excellent description of gender-responsive supervision at its best (well resourced, competently run). It also inadvertently highlights dilemmas within the field and, in so doing, makes the case for much-needed additional research in this understudied area.