Access to Transportation and Outcomes for Women on Probation and Parole

This grant is funded under NIJ's 2013 Ph.D. Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) Program, which provides awards to accredited academic universities that offer research-based doctoral degrees in disciplines relevant to NIJ's mission. The goal of this project is to study transportation deprivation and its effects on recidivism among female probationers and parolees. Phase I entails secondary analysis of data collected for a study supported by the National Science Foundation, Probation/Parole Officer Interactions with Women Offenders: Do Relationship Style and Communication Pattern Predict Outcomes? (aka NSF Women Offenders Study); the purpose is to examine the extent and distribution of transportation access, data reliability and composite access score development, resources and other access predictors, whether access moderates criminogenic needs, and predictive value of access to recidivism. Deprivation is operationalized as: typical weekly travel time and costs; perceived safety, ease and stress; access to dependable transportation; and whether transportation is a problem. The NSF Women Offenders Study data are based on interviews with n=402 drug-involved women on probation or parole for a felony conviction in 16 Michigan counties; variables include risk/need assessments and information on income, physical health, car license/ownership, social support, and perceived neighborhood safety, as well as compliance, arrests and convictions from self-report and administrative records. Residential addresses were used to generate community-level information on transportation access, walkability, and livability which has a crime dimension. Arrest and conviction data were obtained from the Michigan State Police, and information on supervision violations were extracted from Department of Corrections case files-both for 12-month follow-up periods. Confirmatory and other data reduction techniques will create composite transportation deprivation measures, multivariate regression will model the effect of resources on deprivation measured as composite and subcomponents (e.g. stress), logistic regression will analyze whether deprivation directly affects recidivism and/or moderates the effect of criminogenic needs on recidivism, and proportional hazard models will examine whether deprivation affects time to recidivism. Qualitative data will be collected in Phase II on womens insights and experiences regarding: transportation resources and related stress; access strategies when resources are limited; association between transportation and community supervision compliance; and whether and how violation and recidivism relates to transportation deprivation. Subjects from the NSF Women Offenders Study on probation or parole for 12-24 months will be recruited as three groups each n=25 operationalized as: Low in Resources/Access/Recidivism, Low in resources and access but med-high in recidivism, versus low in resources and recidivism but med-high in access. Data from recorded/transcribed interviews will be coded and analyzed using NVIVO on the problem, resource, strategy, and other themes; matrix queries identify relationships between themes and related text data. Proposed deliverables include qualitative datafiles, manuscripts to academic journals, presentations at professional conferences, and reports to community corrections advisory boards, professional corrections associations, and major transit authorities. ca/ncf