Probation officers working with women offenders in the community: Evidence from Catalonia

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyse the experiences of probation officers who supervise women in the community in Catalonia. To this end, qualitative research involving 15 semi-structured interviews with probation officers in Barcelona and Girona was carried out. The results show that professionals agree that there are important gender differences in relation to: (a) personal and penal characteristics and (b) supervision style. The perceptions of practitioners and existing empirical data are broadly consistent. Women who serve community sentences have a wide range of problems, needs and responsibilities compared to men, which is often reflected in the fact that women's attendance is much more irregular, an issue that presents multiple challenges for practitioners. Probation officers already carry out different gender-responsive practises, however, they face different challenges in a gender-insensitive probation system. Furthermore, given the great heterogeneity of the female service users compared to the men, service provision for women in the community also needs to be intersectionally-responsive. Based on these disparities, the elements of probation that the professionals believe work better with women and those that could be improved are discussed.

Substance Use and Peer Associations: How Relationships Between Women on Community Supervision and Their Supervising Officers Matter

“…Probation and parole are among the most prominent and common versions of community corrections and are therefore of enormous importance to justice-involved women in the U.S. Further, the operation of probation and parole is complicated by the special circumstances of women within systems that have been criticized as male-centric (Vasilescu, 2022). Such criticisms stem in large part from the suggestion that the pathways to crime and desistance of justice-involved women differ meaningfully from those of men in similar circumstances, and there is ample evidence to support this (Reisig et al, 2006).…”