Specialized probation is a community supervision intervention that works with individuals in the criminal justice system who have a mental health diagnosis. Unlike standard probation programs, specialized probation is uniquely designed to address the complex mental health and criminogenic needs of individuals with mental illnesses. With their specially trained probation officers, small caseloads, and overall therapeutic approach to probation programming, specialized probation units aim to provide offenders with serious mental illness (SMI) with the support and services they need to desist from crime and address their mental health needs. This article provides a brief history on the need for and development of specialized probation programs, describes their structure and purpose, and provides an overview of their challenges and level of effectiveness.
The Need for Specialized Probation Programs: A Historical Perspective
In the United States, for many years, the use of asylums or psychiatric institutions was not merely a common practice but the singular option in working with people with mental illnesses. Prior to the 20th century, mental illness was a little-understood phenomenon, and individuals who presented with psychiatric symptoms were typically removed from their community and placed in isolated institutions. Over time, as knowledge of mental illness increased and the inability of psychiatric institutions to sufficiently respond to the complex needs of individuals with mental illness became apparent, the approach to treatment changed.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a national push to end the era of large, government-run mental health institutions and move toward a more community-based model. The hope was that by returning individuals with SMI to their communities to live and receive services, it would help to destigmatize mental illnesses and provide the individual with a healthier, more realistic rehabilitative environment.
While this process of deinstitutionalization was well intentioned, the structural support for this endeavor was not present in communities. Community-based services in the realms of supportive housing and mental health were not plentiful enough to support the influx of individuals with pressing mental health needs. This shortage of critical services created a void that came to be filled largely by the criminal justice system. This process is referred to as transinstitutionalization (i.e., the movement of individuals from one institution to another). The criminal justice system became a catchall, with police officers acting as first responders intervening in situations involving individuals with SMI. Jails and other detention facilities were often viewed as temporary housing for this vulnerable population and a means through which the system could deliver short-term services. Over time, individuals with SMI came to represent a disproportionate amount of the population involved in the criminal justice system, but the system was ill-equipped to meet this population’s needs.
The Start of Specialty Probation Programs
Starting in the late 1980s, the criminal justice system began implementing interventions specifically for people with SMI. The initial wave of interventions focused on the front end of the criminal justice system (i.e., police departments, courts, and jails) and was designed to divert people with SMI from traditional legal processing to the mental health system. Some of these front-end tactics included changes to prebooking strategies, new law enforcement training methods, and an increased focus on connecting offenders with SMI to community-based treatment programs. These approaches successfully diverted some people with SMI away from the criminal justice system, especially those with low-level criminal behavior, but a significant number still entered the jails and court system. In response, specialized court-based interventions, including mental health courts and specialized probation, began to take shape.
Specialized probation programs, along with most other specialized criminal justice interventions for people with SMI, began with a primary assumption that people with SMI were becoming involved in the criminal justice system primarily because of their mental health diagnoses and corresponding symptoms. This view, the criminalization hypothesis, suggests that mental health treatment is the primary means to reducing criminal justice involvement for people with SMI. As a result, the first generation of specialized criminal justice interventions for people with SMI, including specialized probation, focused on mental health treatment linkage as opposed to typical criminal justice processing.
However, over the evolution of these programs, a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between criminal activity and mental illness is taking shape. It is becoming more widely recognized, by scholars and practitioners alike, that only addressing the mental health needs of this population is a one-sided and limited approach. It is becoming clear that this presumption ignores the larger context of the individual and the fact that many offenders with SMI are subject to the same criminogenic risk factors as offenders without SMI, including criminal thinking, antisocial peers, and lack of educational and employment opportunities. In response to this growing awareness, the first generation of criminal justice interventions for people with SMI is beginning to adopt strategies to address these criminal risks, which will likely improve their effectiveness.
Description of Specialized Probation Units
Specialized probation programs are uniquely designed to better address the complex mental health and criminogenic needs of individuals with mental illness. In order to be eligible for these probation programs, an individual must meet the diagnostic criteria for a major mental illness. The range of accepted diagnoses can vary depending on the program, but often included are diagnoses associated with SMI, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression.
Specialized probation programs intentionally differ from standard probation programs in several important ways. First, probation officers within specialized probation units typically have lower caseloads than standard probation officers. This reduced caseload allows officers to spend more time with their clients, aiding the probationers in their navigation of the program’s varied mandates. Second, specialized probation officers receive sustained training on mental health issues and behavioral health problem management. This additional training gives specialized probation officers the tools to work effectively with offenders with mental illness and trains them to think more broadly about their clients’ behaviors, struggles, and successes. The final core component of specialized probation is its active integration of community resources. Specialized probation officers work closely with community partners who provide direct treatment services to their clients. This collaborative relationship is meant to create a unified team that is acutely aware of a probationer’s progress throughout the duration of his or her supervision. This team approach has the potential to create a highly supportive, encouraging environment for the probationer, which can significantly contribute to his or her success and overall experience on probation.
Challenges Posed by Specialized Probation
Probationers on both standard probation and specialized probation are expected to juggle a number of requirements in order to successfully complete their sentence, but these tasks can be tremendously more difficult to navigate for probationers with SMI. Probationers with SMI often fail to adhere to the conditions of their community supervision for a variety of reasons. Perhaps one of the principal reasons is that offenders with SMI are at an increased risk of having a comorbid substance use disorder. On the probation officers’ end, a dual diagnosis complicates the coordination of mental health treatment and necessitates integrated but often inaccessible substance abuse and psychiatric services. On the probationers’ end, meeting the mandates of their probation program and avoiding infractions, while working to maintain their sobriety and mental health, is a difficult task. As these programs continue to evolve, it is becoming clear that the complex relationship between probation officer and probationer with SMI is a critical component to specialized probation’s potential effectiveness.
Probation programs of all types are tasked with balancing public safety and rehabilitation concerns, and this dual responsibility carries over to each individual probation officer. The role of probation officer is inherently a dichotomous one: He or she is simultaneously expected to enforce compliance with probation conditions in order to protect public safety and to provide direct and supportive services in order to achieve individual rehabilitation. The complexities and varied responsibilities of the probation officer role are even more significant when supervising probationers with SMI, which supports the unique design of specialized probation programs (i.e., their increased training of officers and reduced caseloads). Because of the complexities that arise with probationers with SMI, specialized probation officers utilize problem-solving strategies and therapeutic approaches to address treatment noncompliance and other violations of probation mandates. While punitive measures can still be taken, the overall approach to noncompliance within specialized probation is to be more therapeutic than disciplinary. Within specialized probation units, the rehabilitative aim is equally as important as the aim of public safety.
Effectiveness of Specialty Probation
There is limited research on specialized probation for persons with SMI. Of the studies that have been conducted, the findings generally support the effectiveness of the specialized mental health caseload. There is preliminary evidence in the areas of increased treatment engagement and improved mental health outcomes as well as potential reductions in recidivism. While more empirical evidence needs to be generated on this topic, specialized probation holds promise when it comes to producing positive mental health and criminal justice outcomes for probationers with SMI. The extent to which specialized probation programs address both mental health and criminogenic needs is critical to the shared desired outcomes of improved mental health and reduced criminal justice involvement. Through the accumulation of more rigorously tested evidence, national standards for specialized probation programs can be developed to create uniformity in program operations and implementation.
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