The first in-depth comparative look at gender-responsive versus traditional probation and parole for women

Probation and Parole Departments must provide for the protection of society as well as the rehabilitation of the offending individual. Probation and Parole: Current Issues presents leading authorities offering various broad and specific aspects of the controversial topic along with the latest research. This handy source provides illustrative examples of current hot button issues and can be used as an excellent core or complement textbook for a probation and parole class. Issues discussed range broadly from mental health considerations to rehabilitation options. The book provides wide multi-national perspectives of the issues, including research and comparisons on juvenile recidivism between the United States and Australia. This crucial work provides a detailed look at the research on individuals in the system, the programs for those citizens that are successful, and those methods that may be ineffective. A study is also presented with data on the positive impact of Assertive Community Treatment workers who provide mental health treatment in the community. The book is extensively referenced and includes several figures and tables to clearly present data. This book is a useful resource for educators, students, and anyone in the probation and parole field. It was published as a special issue of the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation.

A former parole officer shines a bright light on a huge yet hidden part of our justice system through the intertwining stories of seven parolees striving to survive the chaos that awaits them after prison in this illuminating and dramatic book. Prompted by a dead-end retail job and a vague desire to increase the amount of justice in his hometown, Jason Hardy became a parole officer in New Orleans at the worst possible moment. Louisiana’s incarceration rates were the highest in the US and his department’s caseload had just been increased to 220 “offenders” per parole officer, whereas the national average is around 100. Almost immediately, he discovered that the biggest problem with our prison system is what we do—and don’t do—when people get out of prison. Deprived of social support and jobs, these former convicts are often worse off than when they first entered prison and Hardy dramatizes their dilemmas with empathy and grace. He’s given unique access to their lives and a growing recognition of their struggles and takes on his job with the hope that he can change people’s fates—but he quickly learns otherwise. The best Hardy and his colleagues can do is watch out for impending disaster and help clean up the mess left behind. But he finds that some of his charges can muster the miraculous power to save themselves. By following these heroes, he both stokes our hope and fuels our outrage by showing us how most offenders, even those with the best intentions, end up back in prison—or dead—because the system systematically fails them. Our focus should be, he argues, to give offenders the tools they need to re-enter society which is not only humane but also vastly cheaper for taxpayers. As immersive and dramatic as Evicted and as revelatory as The New Jim Crow, The Second Chance Club shows us how to solve the cruelest problems prisons create for offenders and society at large.

The increase in women's imprisonment is very much an international phenomenon. A particular concern of this book is to identify and develop alternative responses.

"[The report] finds that supervision -– probation and parole -– drives high numbers of people, disproportionately those who are Black and brown, right back to jail or prison, while in large part failing to help them get needed services and resources. In states examined in the report, people are often incarcerated for violating the rules of their supervision or for low-level crimes, and receive disproportionate punishment following proceedings that fail to adequately protect their fair trial rights."--Publisher website.

In a Box draws on the experiences of more than one hundred Michigan women on probation or parole to analyze how court, state, and federal policies hamper the state’s efforts at gender-responsive reforms in community supervision. Closely narrating the stories of six of these women, Merry Morash shows how countervailing influences keep reform-oriented probation and parole agents and the women they supervise “in a box.” Supervisory approaches that attempt to move away from punitive frameworks are limited or blocked by neoliberal social policies. Inspired by the interviewees’ reflections on their own experiences, the book offers recommendations for truly effective reforms within and outside the justice system.

Like Philip Stratford's All the Polarities, which compares novels in French and English Canada, A Tale of Two Countries undertakes a crosscultural comparison, examining Canadian and American novels. One of the first studies of Canadian literature in a continental context, the book's critical standpoint and polemical tone are likely to inspire further readings in Canadian–American literary relations. Among the authors dealt with are Robert Kroetsch, Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, William Grass, and Robert Coover.