Lend Me Your Ear: Using Contract Staff to Monitor Institutional Behavior Exhibited by Adult Offenders

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

The privatization of prison services is a growing trend in the field of corrections. This growth has not been matched by evaluative research. The present study examines the effectiveness of using contract staff to monitor outgoing telephone communications of offenders for evidence of administrative violations, which are treated as a general measure of institutional behavior, at 18 adult facilities in a Midwestern department of corrections. Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) modeling is used to examine weekly counts of reported administrative violations from April 30, 2008 to April 30, 2013. Outcome measures and policy implications are also discussed.

Authors

• Kristen N. Sobba, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

• Rick Dierenfeldt, University of Arkansas at Little Rock