A comparison of punishment exchange rates between offenders under supervision and their supervising officers

Offenders, Judges, and Officers Rate the Relative Severity of Alternative Sanctions Compared to Prison

“…Furthermore, this technique not only allows for a comparison of alternatives with prison but also allows one to consider how the various sanctions relate to one another in severity. Wood and his colleagues have utilized exchange rates to examine perceptions of alternative sanctions among a wide variety of groups, including prisoners (Wood & Grasmick, 1999), probationers and parolees (Wood & May, 2001;May, Minor, Wood, & Mooney, 2004;May et al, 2005;Williams, May, & Wood, 2006), and probation and parole officers (Flory et al, 2006). These studies have determined that, in general:…”

“…Flory et al (2006) compared the exchange rates of 612 probationers and parolees with exchange rates generated by 208 of their supervising officers. Of the nine sanctions included in the instrument, Flory et al (2006) found significant differences between offenders and officers in Moore,May,and Wood 53 six alternatives. The most notable difference was in the officers' mean predicted exchange rate for probation, which was nearly double the mean rate presented by offenders.…”

“…A list of the names and addresses of all Moore,May,and Wood 55 the sitting judges in the state was solicited from the Administrative Office of the Courts and consequently served as the target sample. Responses from probation/parole officers and probationers and parolees were obtained from May and Wood who have described their data collection elsewhere (Flory et al, 2006 andMay et al, 2005, respectively).…”

“…The instrument used to collect the data from the three groups under study here was a questionnaire adapted directly from the one utilized by Wood and Grasmick (1999) and Wood and May (2003) and has been described elsewhere (May et al, 2005;Flory et al, 2006). This survey was originally constructed after extensive consultation of incarcerated prisoners in Oklahoma.…”

Self-control theory: The Tyrannosaurus rex of criminology is poised to devour criminal justice

“…Recently, Wolfe (2011) examined the effect of low self-control on perceptions of police legitimacy and procedural justice and found that those with low selfcontrol were significantly likely to consider their interactions with police as illegitimate and unjust. The construct is also likely relevant to studies of offender assessments of intermediate sanctions versus confinement (e.g., Flory, May, Minor, & Wood, 2006;Young, Antonio, & Wingeard, 2009). This research finds that more serious offenders view lesser forms of punishment with greater treatment opportunities as more onerous than simply going to jail or prison.…”