ABSTRACT

In the context of criminal-legal community supervision, standard and specialized probation officers are often tasked with coordinating services for adults diagnosed with serious mental illness (SMI) on their caseloads. The coordination of services varies across different programs including traditional probation, specialty probation, and mental health court. Given the proliferation of programs focused on mental health in the criminal-legal system, the perspectives of front-line workers or street-level bureaucrats in criminal-legal agencies are a rich source of information about what is happening on the ground and could provide insights into the potential translational barriers of policy to practice. A deeper examination of probation officers’ understanding of their own legitimacy in matters related to mental health could be helpful in determining what specific skills and levers are being used on the ground, and the connection between these responses and the purported program. In the criminal-legal system, legitimacy is tied to perceptions of fairness and procedural justice. In contrast to standard probation officers, specialty and mental health probation officers mobilize evidence-based interventions, build therapeutic alliances, and utilize their expertise in service of positive probationer outcomes, but in so doing, they often revert to enforcing compliance through more traditional means such as legal leverage.

Keywords: legitimacy, authority, serious mental illness (SMI), specialty probation, mental health probation, compliance, treatment monitoring

Estimates reveal that over one million adults diagnosed with serious mental illness (SMI) are involved in the criminal-legal system (Glaze and Parks, 2012), with a majority of those individuals engaged with correctional supervision (probation or parole) while living in their communities (Ditton, 1999; Epperson et al., 2014; Glaze and Parks, 2012). This study focuses on the probation supervision of people with SMI. Despite the proliferation of specialized mental health interventions in the criminal-legal system, people diagnosed with SMI are more likely to recidivate or have their community supervision sentence revoked, particularly if they are involved in either traditional or specialty probation (Epperson et al., 2014; Prins and Draper, 2009; Skeem et al., 2011; Skeem and Louden, 2006; Powell et al., 2024). In this context, probation officers sometimes frame their work as a form of care and accountability promotion, using the “strong-arm” approach to push individuals under probation supervision toward treatment regimes with the threat of probation revocation or reincarceration (Piehowski and Phelps, 2023). The “strong-arm” approach within probation and mandated treatment contexts is well-documented, and it is linked with approaches aiming to rehabilitate “high risk and high need” individuals regardless of their own investment in treatment (Gowan and Whetstone, 2012).

In this paper, we investigate whether probation officers across three different probation programs (Standard Probation, Mental Health Probation, and Mental Health Court) feel as though they hold the requisite expertise and authority to coordinate treatment for people on probation with SMI, and if so, the domains from which this legitimacy is obtained. For the purposes of our study, we define legitimacy as probation officers’ perception that they have the authority, training and access to levers to provide services to people on probation with SMI. Our analysis extends earlier conceptualizations of legitimacy by applying it to criminal-legal actors, particularly probation officers, exploring where officers garner legitimacy and how this is then enacted with people on probation with SMI. Our concept of legitimacy parallels Max Weber’s concept of power-holder legitimacy, which asserts that power-holders must perceive their role as legitimate—and morally as well as legally justified—to ensure audience legitimation (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012). Perceptions—and therefore the projection—of legitimacy have important implications for how people on probation respond to and comply with legal authorities. Our study examines the perceived individual, organizational, and systemic factors that inform officers’ sense of legitimacy regarding treatment coordination for people on probation with SMI. In doing so, we elucidate how probation officers negotiate their dual role as criminal-legal actors and treatment coordinators in their work.

Background: Legitimacy in Responding to Serious Mental Illness in Criminal-Legal Contexts

The high prevalence of individuals with SMI in the criminal-legal system—caused, in part, by welfare state retrenchment and the gutting of federal and state funding for community-based substance use and mental health treatment—coincides with a transformation in the criminal-legal system toward providing additional services for individuals with SMI, such as mental health probation programs and mental health courts (Gottschalk, 2016; Abramovitz, 2022). However, the outcomes of these programs can vary widely.

It appears that the outcomes for those diagnosed with SMI varies widely depending on the type of criminal-legal programming to which they are assigned, with Mental Health Courts showing the most promise in terms of decreasing rates of re-arrest (Sarteschi et al., 2011; Skeem et al., 2017). However, there is no uniform set of guidelines for how these specialized programs should function and interface with people on probation with SMI, rendering accountability challenging (Skeem and Louden, 2006). Additionally, in the context of court-based and probation programming, there are emergent critiques of recidivism as the predominant measure of program effectiveness or participant success (Rosenfeld and Grigg, 2022; Sharlein, 2018). Particularly in the case of individuals with SMI, clinical and health-related outcomes might be equally relevant in comparison to outcomes measures focused on rearrests or continued criminal-legal involvement.

As the needs of people with SMI can vary widely, so too can the structure of community supervision programs that are meant to cater to their needs. In addition to standard probation and specialty mental health probation, another form of community supervision for people with SMI in the criminal-legal system is mental health court. Mental health courts may vary widely in structure, but they often mobilize a team model that includes a probation officer, a caseworker, a judge, and attorneys (Epperson et al., 2013). Crucial to the mental health court model is the intermingling of criminal-legal and mental health professionals in the team (McNiel and Binder, 2007). In the literature, probation officers feature prominently as criminal-legal actors who come into contact with this population through multiple kinds of supervision/diversion programs (Matejkowski et al., 2020; Mulvey and Larson, 2019; Oostermeijer et al., 2023; Wolff et al., 2014).

The expanded presence of probation officers in supervision and diversion for people with SMI reflects a broader trend: criminal-legal actors have taken on responsibilities normally designated to medicine or other helping professions. Recent literature has examined the medicalization of American jails as well as the expansion of the carceral state through rehabilitative programming, including treatment courts and specialty probation (Lara-Millan, 2020; Schept, 2015). These boundary-spanning programs and processes prompt actors within these contexts take on these dual treatment coordination and compliance monitoring roles. As probation officers take on the responsibilities associated with making mental health treatment referrals and monitoring treatment progress, their expanded—and possibly fragmented—roles may have implications for their self-perception as legitimate criminal-legal and psychiatric authorities (Dominey, 2016). Probation officers’ roles and professional status are in flux, and thus, legitimacy is a relevant concept to consider when tracking the role redefinition of these professionals (Martin and Zettler, 2021).

Despite the discretion afforded to specialty probation officers, more research is needed to better understand probation officers’ perceptions of their roles and their capacity to fulfill them (Skeem and Louden, 2006). Specialty probation officers could be understood as street-level bureaucrats, or front-line workers who operate in dual ways—supervising and monitoring compliance for people on probation, but also referring them to supportive services. Some research has focused on probation officer and mental health court stakeholder perceptions surrounding their roles as well as challenges they face (Gallagher et al., 2018; Skeem et al., 2003). Understanding the specialty probation officer as a street-level bureaucrat allows for a more nuanced analysis of how these officers understand their work in relationship to the broader criminal-legal bureaucracy, which was not originally designed with this specialized role in mind (Terpstra and Mulvey, 2022).

Within existing literature, legitimacy has been conceptually applied to studies of criminalized individuals’ perceptions of the law and criminal-legal actors (Digard, 2010; Tyler, 2003). In this context, legitimacy is tied to perceived fairness and procedural justice, as well as rapport; the more a probationer perceives that he or she is treated fairly, the more he or she is likely to “accept the directives and decisions of the police and courts, and the likelihood of defiance, hostility, and resistance is diminished” (Tyler, 2003: 286). Others have explored how prison officers conceptualize legitimacy, including how officers view increasingly tough stances on probation enforcement as an ‘illegitimate’ form of direct practice (Liebling, 2011; Robinson and Ugwudike, 2012).

Specialty probation officers’ sense of legitimacy likely shapes the choices they make about people under their supervision, with important consequences for people on probation with SMI. Frontline workers leverage their discretion to allocate sources, which are often biased and influenced by perceptions of deservingness (Lavee, 2021). Specialty probation supervision facilitates—and perhaps necessitates—a higher degree of officer discretion than standard probation supervision, relying upon nuanced understandings of the lives of people on probation (Terpstra and Mulvey, 2022). In their dual role as referral providers and treatment monitors, specialty probation officers may believe that they possess certain specialized forms of authority, skills, and knowledge that produce a unique kind of legitimacy within the broader criminal-legal system, which is not designed to respond to the unique needs of individuals with SMI.

Methods

Recruitment and Participation

The semi-structured interviews used for this analysis were part of a parent study involving a comparative evaluation of court-based programs that serve people on probation with SMI. Probation officers from three programs in Cook County, Illinois were recruited: a specialized mental health probation unit; mental health court; and standard (non-specialized) adult probation. The specialized mental health probation unit has been in operation in Cook County for more than 25 years and consists of specially trained probation officers who supervise a reduced caseload of people on probation diagnosed with a major Axis I mental illness (Jesse et al., 2008). The Cook County Felony Mental Health Court was implemented in 2004 and serves individuals with SMI who have been arrested for nonviolent, nonsexual felonies. During the time that this study was conducted, the specialized mental health probation unit and the mental health court employed 12 probation officers; we refer to this group collectively as “specialized probation officers” since these are officers with specialized training and reduced caseloads in both mental health court and specialized mental health probation contexts. The Cook County Adult Probation Department—one of the largest probation departments in the county—has an active caseload of approximately 15,000 people on probation. “Standard probation officers” who reported currently supervising at least one probationer who had a serious mental illness were identified for potential participation in the study.

Members of the research team recruited specialized and standard probation officers via email and phone inquiries. All specialized probation officers (n = 12) and a subset of standard probation officers who supervised at least one probationer with a mental health-related supervision condition (n = 15) were invited to participate in voluntary and anonymous in-depth interviews. Of the 27 probation officers invited, 11 specialized probation officers and 10 standard probation officers agreed to participate in the study, for a total of 21 participants. The semi-structured in-depth interview format focused on how, within the context of their probation program type, probation officers conceptualize and engage in their work with people on probation who have SMI. We asked standard probation officers to restrict their responses to the context of their work with only those on their caseload who have SMI. Domains in the interview guide included: background and perspectives on SMI; description and analysis of the specific probation type; officer roles and functions; and client profiles. Examples of questions in the interview guide included: “Do you think there is a connection between having a mental illness and getting involved in the criminal justice system, and what might this connection be?” “What are the strengths of your program in working with people with SMI?” and “How are mental health services coordinated for the people on probation you supervise?” Interviews occurred in a private room during the probation officers' regular work hours, and lasted from 45 to 85 min. The authors' respective institutional review boards gave human subjects approval for the study protocols.

Data Analysis

A thematic approach was used to analyze the in-depth interviews with probation officers (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Analysis focused on probation officers’ perceptions of their ability to discuss and coordinate mental health treatment with people who have SMI on their probation caseloads. During the analytic process, comments involving how probation officers engaged with people on probation around mental health treatment coordination were broadly coded as “treatment and coordination.” After thorough analyses of the interviews, we coded more explicit themes from this broad category. There were noteworthy differences between how probation officers from each program interfaced with people on probation around the issue of mental health treatment. We also found a relationship between probation officers’ perception of the skills and resources at their disposal and what we termed as their sense of legitimacy toward engaging in people on probations’ mental health treatment. Across each model, a high degree of thematic consensus emerged, suggesting that we had reached saturation.

We proceeded to break the treatment and coordination code down into more explicit themes, expressing the various ways that probation officers believed they acquired and/or lacked the legitimacy to impact their client’s mental health treatment. The initial set of themes were conceptually articulated and applied as followed: (1) Structure: The overall design of the program; (2) Legal Means: Such as court mandates and violations; (3) Non-Legal Means: Soft-skills, such as rapport building and reaching out to colleagues for help; (4) Knowledge and Expertise: Formal knowledge of mental health issues gained through personal education, professional trainings, or through years of field work; (5) Funding: State or federal money designated to improving their program’s ability to engage in treatment coordination, such as reserving beds in local treatment facilities and providing consistent trainings on mental health issues. These themes were then consolidated into: (1) Legal Means; (2) Non-Legal Means; (3) Formal Connections to Resources. Upon further analyses, the structure theme became the larger umbrella category that all other themes were related to. We found that the range of tools that facilitated or constrained officers’ perceived abilities to coordinate treatment were largely determined by the organizational structure and design of each program.

Results

Impact of Program Structure on Officers’ Sense of Legitimacy

Our analysis surfaced a foundational insight about the role of programmatic structure on officers’ perceived legitimacy. The distinct organizational structure of each probation program defined the conditions that constrained or enabled probation officers’ sense of legitimacy to coordinate treatment for people on probation. In other words, the design, purpose, and aims of each program shaped the manifestation of each program’s “Legal Means,” “Non-Legal Means,” and “Formal Connection to Resources” (see Figure 1). A brief description of each program’s defining structural elements are discussed followed by the findings related to the three main thematic categories. We would like to note that the organizational structures we describe below are particular to the three programs that were studied in this research project (i.e., standard probation, mental health probation, and mental health court in Cook County, Illinois). While there may certainly be shared characteristics across these programs nationwide, the structures we are outlining in this paper are specific to the three programs that were focused on in this study.

Figure 1: Organizational Structure of Cook County’s Standard Probation

Probation officers in standard probation at Cook County can have caseloads exceeding 100 people on probation (Jalbert and Rhodes, 2012). Of these people on probation, many have a variety of supervision needs, including substance use disorder and mental health issues. While the standard probation program was not developed to handle specialized cases, the majority of people on probation with SMI are placed in this program. This is because there is limited caseload capacity in specialized programs, and because mental illness is often not being identified or shared at the time of one’s probation assignment. Unlike in mental health probation and mental health court, mental health treatment is not a guaranteed court-ordered condition of a standard probationer’s sentence, but in some cases a standard probationer who is aware of their clinical disorder voluntarily arranges and participates in mental health treatment, typically without the assistance of the standard probation officer.

Organizational Structure of Cook County’s Mental Health Probation

Unlike standard probation, mental health probation at Cook County was designed to specifically target and provide mental health supports for people on probation with SMI. As part of this design, probation officers carry fewer cases than standard probation officers, averaging 60-90 active cases. Rooted in Rule 132 and the programmatic requirements that this policy entails, mental health probation officers are required to document their sessions in case notes for insurance-billable time (Spitzmueller, 2018). Tasks that can be categorized by and billed through Medicaid were the central focus of this mental health probation program, including eligibility and risk/need assessments, counseling, verification of medication compliance, documentation procedures, monitoring psychiatric treatment progress, and following up with clients on other court mandates.

People sentenced to mental health probation enter the program through one of three ways: (1) a direct mandate from the judge or a referral from the defense attorney, (2) a motion from a standard probation officer who believes their client may have a SMI, or (3) through probation officer-conducted mental health eligibility screenings.

Organizational Structure of Cook County’s Mental Health Court

The mental health court probation officers and case managers at Cook County have even smaller caseloads than their mental health probation counterparts (around 20 people), the client is seen in court more regularly, and decisions pertaining to treatment mandates and legal status are made by a collective of professionals rather than by one person. This might include a defense attorney, a judge, and a court-employed case manager. Unlike standard probation and mental health probation, nearly all mental health court defendants at Cook County are first engaged while they are in jail in a formal and consistent process, which entails a thorough assessment and an investigation into the person’s treatment history by court staff. Central to the team is the case manager, who conducts the mental health assessments, makes active treatment referrals, is in close contact with both the probationer and treatment providers, and is considered the treatment “expert” on the mental health court team. Next, defendants are screened by court staff to ensure that the client meets qualifying criteria for mental health court. A set of initial treatment recommendations is made and presented to the defendant in the form of a contract, which formalizes the process of treatment compliance. People involved in the mental health court program must also be formally diagnosed with a co-occurring substance use disorder.

Legal Means as Technical Leverage for Probation Officers

For each program, perceived legitimacy in coordinating mental health treatment is impacted by a variety of legal means, which provide technical leverage in setting and enforcing the expectations for participation in treatment. We found several similarities, and some notable differences, in legal means between standard probation and mental health probation. How legal means play out in the context of mental health court is distinct from both standard and mental health probation.

In standard probation, probation officers perceive the context of supervision as definitively tied to the court order, meaning it has primary influence over the probation officers’ decision-making. Therefore, whether a court order for a person on standard probation specifies participation in a mental health evaluation or treatment as a condition of probation is of primary importance. In this way, the court order becomes the foundation on which the legitimacy in addressing issues of mental health rests, and indeed if issues of mental health will be addressed at all. One standard probation officer summarizes the primacy of the court order:

Well, what they have to do obviously is address their conditions of probation. If they don't do that then everything else is irrelevant. Because if they don't do that, we have to by policy violate them. And that just causes a domino effect. (Standard Probation Officer 020)

Similar to standard probation, in mental health probation, officers pay considerable attention to the conditions of probation set by the sentencing judge. The primary difference is that having mental health treatment as a court-ordered condition of probation is ubiquitous in mental health probation. The regularity of these conditions affects officers’ perceived legitimacy to coordinate mental health treatment. Having mental health treatment conditions on every case seems to provide mental health probation officers with enhanced legitimacy in monitoring compliance and exercising legal leverage (i.e. initiating a violation of probation) when deemed necessary. Since mental health treatment conditions are always present, mental health probation officers treated the monitoring and enforcement of these conditions as standard operating practice.

Mental health probation officers regularly made decisions to file a violation of probation for treatment noncompliance, or at least have the probationer go back before the judge to exercise legal leverage:

(…) if you’re mentally ill on a regular probation, your ass might be requested to go see your doctor, but there is nothing in place to force you to go see your doctor or to adhere to whatever the doctor’s recommendations are. There’s no violation that you can do. That’s not something you can violate for. Medication or treatment. So there’s nothing. You have to voluntarily do it yourself. So that’s the difference between regular probation and mental health. We have a strong arm to make you receive some sort of treatment whether it be medication or therapy or a combination of both, whereas regular caseload cannot force you to do anything with your mental illness at that point. All you can do is, at regular caseload, is make sure that they’re reporting regularly. (Mental Health Probation Officer 007)

As described by the mental health officer above, the legal leverage afforded by mental health probation to mandate mental health treatment for people on probation is their strong arm, providing officers with the perceived authority to enact the strategies necessary to enforce treatment compliance. Unlike their counterparts in standard probation, mental health probation officers in mental health probation can make their supervisees receive treatment. This is facilitated by mental health probation officers’ cultivation of relationships with treatment providers in the community.

In mental health court, there is also a strong reliance on legal means, but the structure of these means is more pliable and fluid than those in standard and mental health probation. Participation in mental health court begins with a clear legal mechanism in the form of a signed participation contract. A mental health court case manager conducts an assessment and thorough investigation into the client’s treatment history, and then initial treatment recommendations are presented to the client in the form of a contract. If the client agrees to participate, he/she must also enter a guilty plea for current charges. This process fosters the court’s legitimacy in distinct legal terms—the contract is an official document formalizing a process of treatment compliance, and it is a legal process to which the client agrees by expressing legal culpability.

Upon entry to mental health court, the legal levers of the program are explicit, but once in mental health court, the process of enacting and discussing the legal means necessary to coordinate treatment is less overt. Mental health court staff express that their team has the flexibility to alter treatment conditions in response to perceived client needs. While this is often seen as a preferred, creative alternative—by the mental health court team—to making an official violation of probation, it also exemplifies the mental health court’s sense of overall reach and power in treatment coordination:

With Mental Health Court, if a person is noncompliant, there is a discussion, so to speak, with the team to decide how we’re gonna move forward with this if we can do an intervention first before we get to the point of an actual violation. So, a person may test positive for illegal substance, and we may not file a violation. We may say, ‘You know what? We’re gonna link you up with in-patient treatment. If you don’t go, then we may have to file a violation of probation.’ And, nine times out of ten, the client will go versus them face the violation of probation. So, there’s this team approach that gives a lot more options. (Mental Health Court Probation Officer 001)

This quote highlights a key difference between mental health court and mental health probation. Officers in both programs discuss a core program emphasis on leveraging alternative approaches to probation violations, particularly for treatment noncompliance. However, for mental health probation officers, there are limited options for how treatment can be legally leveraged, as nonspecialized judges are the ultimate decisionmakers despite officers’ violation petitions. In mental health court, responses to noncompliance involve a seemingly wide range of options, which include making large or small adjustments to the treatment contracts. What lies at the heart of this flexibility is the legal means provided by a sole judge who functions as the legal credibility for the team. During the process of mental health court participation, the expectations for treatment are determined by the mental health court team and conveyed to the person in the program, usually through the case manager and then revisited by the judge. This process still relies on legal means, but one that is conveyed in more relational and less overtly punitive terms.

Non-Legal Means as Tools for Treatment Promotion and Coordination

All probation officers operate within the institutional constraints of their respective programs, and their ability to coordinate treatment for people on probation with SMI is shaped by both program constraints as well as their individual capabilities. Regarding their individual capabilities, officers use their interpersonal skills and knowledge to communicate with people on probation about their mental health needs. Probation officers also describe trying to develop ongoing relationships with community providers, working to increase the likelihood that their clients can receive mental healthcare without delays. These non-legal means vary for each program but assume similar patterns for standard probation and mental health probation; namely, probation officers mobilize their expertise and professional relationships to coordinate treatment as a non-legal means to enforce probation terms.

Knowledge and expertise converge in the probation officer’s sense of whether or not they are qualified to coordinate treatment with a client. Probation officers who feel that they are not qualified are less likely to leverage non-legal means of exercising their authority to refer and mandate clients to mental health treatment. Higher levels of knowledge about treatment providers can facilitate more active referral and case management activities, whereas a lack of knowledge impedes a probation officer’s capacity to effectively engage individuals with SMI. A probation officer’s knowledge greatly impacts their ability to effectively leverage non-legal tactics, which are the byproduct of their perceived legitimacy, relationships, and training/qualifications.

When probation officers mobilize non-legal means of treatment coordination, this often takes the form of talking to the people on probation with SMI, trying to encourage them to comply with treatment, and using their relationships with family and the community treatment providers to reduce the perceived coercive effect of probation treatment conditions. However, unlike standard probation officers, mental health probation officers articulated a strong skillset for working with people on probation with SMI and a deep familiarity with community treatment providers. For instance, mental health probation officers suggested that they have specialized skills for counseling people on probation with SMI:

We provide individual counseling. That’s something newer that we’ve added over the last – what – year and a half, where we’re really taking a close look at their needs, and helping them to facilitate change. That’s the big thing that we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get them to be more responsible and more accountable, so we’re helping to facilitate that change with them. We’re talking about maybe how they can cope with issues a little bit better. So we’re actually doing counseling. (Mental Health Probation Officer 005).

These specialized skills equip mental health probation officers with a stronger sense of legitimacy for enacting non-legal methods of enforcing probation conditions. Institutional logics and constraints such as insurance billing and case documentation requirements may also shape a kind of medicalized legitimacy for mental health probation officers (Spitzmueller, 2018). While this is a non-legal form of legitimacy, it ultimately feeds into officers’ sense of authority to make treatment referrals and enforce them through legal means, e.g. petitioning a judge for a probation violation. If the judge does not follow the officer’s recommendations or issue a violation, the officer is then compelled to rely on relational approaches to deal with non-compliant cases or simply wait out the terms of the probation:

So our only option is to continue to encourage them. Let them possibly tell you if they could what would be the benefits from receiving mental health treatment. What's so bad about getting it? You know try to soften up the stigma and let them know that they're not alone. That there are other people and at least you would be getting help for your situation. (Mental Health Probation Officer 004).

When legal means do not work to enforce treatment compliance for people with SMI, probation officers have to resort to relational approaches in hopes that probationers will eventually engage in the services that have been mandated by the court.

For standard probation officers, non-legal methods for treatment coordination are frequently the result of structural constraints, as well as a lack of knowledge and skills they feel are critical for dealing with people on probation who have SMI. Because standard probation officers frequently pointed to a lack of specialized skills and knowledge of treatment providers, non-legal and relational approaches are the most-deployed means of engaging people on probation with SMI. However, standard probation officers reflected that relying on non-legal means is the result of a lack of other options to secure legitimacy when referring clients to treatment or coordinating services. In other words, they are a tactic of last resort for officers who feel underqualified:

Probation Officer: … I think it would be beneficial if we had more people who are qualified to be dealing with mental illness, because there is no magic happening in my office that I'm suddenly qualified to be – I'm not providing services. My role is to, certainly to listen, because there are plenty of people that I see that just need to talk. But other than that, and providing a good sounding board, and listening to what they have to say, and seeing what is available… and I actually have a good connection with most people. I like to think. A good rapport and so we have fairly good conversations, however, I am not a therapist. And some people really want you to be that.

Interviewer: I bet.

Probation Officer: So you just kind of listen, but I wish I was.

(Standard Probation Officer 016)

This probation officer underscores his ability to listen to and communicate with people on probation with SMI and feels quite confident that he has a “good rapport” with his clients. At the same time, he recognizes that his therapeutic skillset and his connection to formal treatment offerings are not strong enough to directly address the mental health needs of people on probation with SMI and enforce compliance. Standard probation officers voiced that they did not feel qualified to deal with the mental health concerns of clients in comparison to other professionals who hold more legitimate non-legal authority, such as therapists. Thus, outside of rapport-building, non-legal means of embodying legitimacy were rarer for standard probation officer.

Non-legal sources of legitimacy play out differently in mental health court than in standard and mental health probation. Because mental health court case managers and probation officers can draw on legal and medical sources of authority with relative ease, the need for non-legal means might have been smaller than in standard and mental health probation settings. Mental health court probation officers rarely articulated instances of resorting to relational approaches while attempting to engage people on probation with SMI in treatment. The relevant instances that we did find were the practices described by case managers, not officers. While this was also limited, case managers—more so than probation officers—expressed how mental health court and its team members build caring relationships with people on probation. One case manager supervisor stated:

(…) people can live normal lives even with a mental illness (…) and so bringing that to light and trying to normalize that, you know … this a difficult time you’ve gone through … you’ve gone through some difficult times in your life and you’ve come to where you are now and you are not completely impaired … it seems like the mental illness itself seems to be like a weakness to people because they feel like, just because they have something that’s going on with them they feel like separate from the world … or you know however, that’s why I try to normalize it … there’s people all over the world who, God forbid, they go on an airplane they’re gonna have an anxiety attack … it’s ok, let’s just um try to find ways to deal with it.(Mental Health Court Case Manager 025)

The larger team approach in mental health court, where case managers are viewed as the treatment experts, means that probation officers in that program can rely on other team members to interact with mental health court probationers in more relational, therapeutic ways. In other words, the organizational structure of mental health court provides mental health court probation officers with a reliable alternative to employing non-legal means themselves.

Formal Connection to Resources as a Means of Legitimizing the Probation Officer Role

In this section, we detail the extent to which funding and formal connections to treatment resources affected the perceived legitimacy of probation officers in coordinating mental health treatment and services for their clients. More so than their specialized counterparts, standard probation officers faced substantial barriers to treatment coordination. With recent budget cuts and a reduction in designated resource coordinators who handled referrals, standard probation officers expressed challenges in locating resources and providing linkages to mental health services. After the department cut a resource coordinator position, probation officers frequently described not having an integrated and collaborative relationship with community service providers, especially mental health service providers. Resource coordinators were the primary brokers in service provision, and with a decrease in their numbers, this left a knowledge and relational gap regarding community services within the department:

That's very frustrating, because I used to be the resource officer back when we had more resources. It wasn't that impressive back in the day, trust me, but it was a lot more than it currently is. And we have no one to sit down and discuss treatment referrals. I have repeatedly said, when they ask for input for any kind of training, that is what I think they should be focusing on is what mental health resources and alcohol, drug, and these things that typically our people are in dire need of, and if we're to be the ones referring them, then educate us. I know places, but I'm sure I don't know everyone. And yeah that's a problem. (Standard Probation Officer 016)

Mental health probation officers expressed an enhanced capacity to collaborate with community providers, indicating a more integrated system of care for their clients than standard probation. Through trainings, formal education, and varied work experiences, mental health probation officers become familiar with key community providers and develop a cache of knowledge to assist people on probation with SMI in treatment coordination:

“We have stronger connections with community agencies that could actually assist with housing, with medication, with doctor treatment, therapy and stuff like that. So we’re definitely more hands-on with the community agencies than regular caseload officers.” (Mental Health Probation Officer 007)

Together, knowledge and relational connections to community-based services allow mental health probation officers to avoid resource issues faced by standard probation officers.

Mental health court probation officers work in a unit with more funding and comparatively better access to service providers than mental health probation and standard probation units. Their specialized ties and contracts with community providers create a more formalized safety net when it comes to working with people with SMI. One probation officer mentioned having referral options that are directly tied to their grants, which allowed for immediate placements within the first six months of an individual’s mental health court experience. This immediate safeguard can give probation officers time to apply for and stabilize other services such as income and benefits for individuals under supervision.

A substantial amount of mental health court’s funding derives from the court’s functionality as a dual-diagnosis court that only accepts clients with co-occurring disorders. As a specialty court with connections to state and federal funding, options for treatment referrals in mental health court far exceed those in mental health probation and standard probation. Mental health court staff rely heavily on funding from the Illinois Department of Human Services’ Division of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse (DASA), though they do make it clear that placement through DASA can still take several weeks. Despite these unique provider connections and funding sources, mental health court probation officers still identify difficulties surrounding client placement; placements can be hard to secure and state resources have dwindled due to budget cuts.

Limitations

A potential limitation of this study is its geographic specificity; it was focused on models implemented in Cook County. While based on national models, each localized model may have some unique features as compared to other jurisdictions across the country. However, we argue that our paper holds idiographic generalizability. That is, researchers and program evaluators should still be able to draw conceptual inferences from our findings and apply them to local contexts. For example, we found that probation officers across all programs were more likely to use legal means and punitive strategies to ensure compliance, despite other mechanisms (e.g., formal connection to resources) at their disposal. While program models across the country may look different, it is worth investigating and comparing the types of strategies that probation officers are most likely to use and why.

Discussion

While probation officers across all three programs mentioned three distinct domains through which they currently feel or would feel legitimized to engage people on probation with SMI in behavioral health treatment, legal means appear to be most frequently pursued. Notably, specialty probation officers perceive their role as one in which a strong-arm approach is what sets them apart from clinicians, facilitating a form of coercive care linkage (Piehowski and Phelps, 2023). The desire for more legal leverage among standard probation officers makes sense, as their toolkit for working with people on probation with SMI is more limited in its ability to mobilize resources.

Implications

plicationsThis study holds substantial implications for the conceptual landscape of qualitative criminology. This qualitative analysis breaks from normative discussions of criminal-legal legitimacy, which largely focus on the perceived legitimacy of criminal-legal institutions and actors according to criminalized individuals and individuals with no direct system contact. While important, this narrow focus on the concept of criminal-legal legitimacy has not adequately captured how frontline criminal-legal actors perceive their roles, particularly as roles may shift with the increasing medicalization of the criminal-legal system. This study aimed to broaden the discussion of criminal-legal legitimacy by attending to the latter.

Additionally, this study formalizes and operationalizes concepts such as legitimacy in probation contexts to facilitate further quantitative analysis of organizational and individual factors informing specialized probation program outcomes. The specialized officers’ default impulse to initiate legal pressure to achieve treatment compliance should make us question the utility of programs that were ostensibly designed to work with people in a more rehabilitative, less punitive way. What traits or factors within the organizational structure of these specialized probation programs reify the primacy of legal and punitive measures to obtain treatment compliance from people on probation with SMI? Quantitative analyses of specialized probation outcomes are now better poised to ask: what are the measures of treatment compliance utilized by probation officers, and how do they correlate with other outcomes measures? This question becomes particularly salient when we consider the ways that probation officers have assumed these tasks because the criminal-legal system has continued to take on medical and social service functions. The intermingling of criminal-legal and medical systems is also complicated by the stigmatizing attitudes held by many probation, parole, and correctional officers toward individuals with SMI (Oostermeijer et al., 2023). Quantitative approaches that extend this paper’s line of inquiry might engage more directly with the operationalized and measurable definitions of stigma and legitimacy that play a role in probation supervision and outcomes.

Probation officers’ perceived legitimacy in supervising people on probation with SMI also has far reaching implications for criminal-legal practice. Our findings should be in conversation with prior studies that demonstrate that relying primarily on punitive and coercive tactics is not an effective approach to supporting people with SMI within the criminal-legal system (Dowden and Andrews, 2004). Additionally, the needs of individuals with SMI should be more seriously taken into consideration by all forms of community supervision in order to promote successful completion of community supervision sentences (Mulvey and Larson, 2019). Beyond promoting successful completion of community supervision sentences, it is also vital to understand the factors influencing the likelihood of unsuccessful probation outcomes, including the complex role that mental health systems involvement plays in this dynamic (Solomon et al., 2002). Indeed, analyses of a larger sample from these three programs found higher rates of successful probation completion for individuals with SMI on standard probation (63%) compared to those in mental health court (56%) or mental health probation (50%) (Epperson and Lurigio, 2016). Mental health courts have a prominent role in the diversion of people with serious mental illnesses from jail or prison sentences (Canada et al., 2019). To build upon existing knowledge about what works in specialized interventions for probation officers, more research on their roles and self-perception is necessary. More specifically, additional research on probation officers’ sense of competency, authority, and efficacy has the potential to deepen insights about meeting the needs of individuals with SMI in the criminal-legal system (Loong et al., 2019).

Conclusion

In a criminal-legal system that is not specifically designed to address the needs of individuals with SMI, the role of probation officers is being defined in real time by officers themselves as they experience competing demands for specialization and versatility. A critical eye toward the self-perception and role-definition of probation officers will facilitate more nuanced research on their positioning and practice within criminal-legal apparatuses, especially as specialty probation research continues to uncover potential benefits of this approach to SMI in criminal-legal settings (Van Deinse et al., 2022).

The strong-arm approach to supervision is manifest in the perceptions of standard and specialty probation officers regarding their roles. In alignment with extant research on strong-arm approaches to rehabilitation, this study observes that probation officers are participants in a coercive care dynamic, wherein effective treatment outcomes are perceived as contingent upon a “tough love” approach toward supervisees with mental health needs (Piehowski and Phelps, 2023). Specialty probation officers are called upon to mobilize evidence-based interventions, build therapeutic alliances, and leverage their expertise in service of positive outcomes across people on probation. Yet, in so doing, they often revert to enforcing compliance through more traditional means such as legal leverage. While clinicians and peer navigators are also increasingly common actors in criminal-legal settings, the dual role of the specialty probation officer as an arbiter of supervisory control and referral-related expertise suggests that perceived legitimacy is a central ingredient to consider when analyzing the potential and the limitations of specialty mental health probation.

References

Abramovitz, M. (2023). From the welfare state to the carceral state: Whither social reproduction? Affilia, 38, 20–39.

Bottoms, A., & Tankebe, J. (2012). Beyond procedural justice: A dialogic approach to legitimacy in criminal justice. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 102, 119–170.

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–101.

Canada, K., Barrenger, S., & Ray, B. (2019). Bridging mental health and criminal justice systems: A systematic review of the impact of mental health courts on individuals and communities. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 25, 73–91.

Digard, L. (2010). When legitimacy is denied: Offender perceptions of the prison recall system. Probation Journal, 57, 43–61.

Ditton, P. M. (1999). Mental health and treatment of inmates and probationers. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report.

Dominey, J. (2016). Fragmenting probation: Recommendations from research. Probation Journal, 63, 136–143.

Dowden, C., & Andrews, D. A. (2004). The importance of staff practice in delivering effective correctional treatment: A meta-analytic review of core correctional practice. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 48, 203–214.

Epperson, M., & Lurigio, A. (2016). Comparative evaluation of court-based responses to offenders with mental illnesses (2010-IJ-CX-0033) (Research Report No. 249894). National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs.

Epperson, M., Thompson, J., & Canada, K. E. (2013). Mental health courts. Encyclopedia of Social Work.

Epperson, M. W., Canada, K., Thompson, J., & Lurigio, A. (2014). Walking the line: Specialized and standard probation officer perspectives on supervising probationers with serious mental illnesses. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 37, 473–483.

Gallagher, A. E., Anestis, J. C., Gottfried, E. D., & Carbonell, J. L. (2018). The effectiveness of a mental health court in reducing recidivism in individuals with severe mental illness and comorbid substance use disorder. Psychological Injury and Law, 11, 184.

Glaze, L. E., & Parks, E. (2012). Correctional populations in the United States, 2011 (No. NCJ 239972). Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Gowan, T., & Whetstone, S. (2012). Making the criminal addict: Subjectivity and social control in a strong-arm rehab. Punishment & Society, 14, 69–93.

Jalbert, S. K., & Rhodes, W. (2012). Reduced caseloads improve probation outcomes. Journal of Crime and Justice, 35, 221–238.

Jesse, K., Bishop, D., Thomas, J., & Dudish-Poulsen, J. (2008). Adult probation department mental health unit: An outcomes investigation. Professional Issues in Criminal Justice, 3, 1–17.

Liebling, A. (2011). Distinctions and distinctiveness in the work of prison officers: Legitimacy and authority revisited. European Journal of Criminology, 8, 484–499.

Loong, D., Bonato, S., Barnsley, J., & Dewa, C. S. (2019). The effectiveness of mental health courts in reducing recidivism and police contact: A systematic review. Community Mental Health Journal, 55, 1073–1098.

Martin, K. D., & Zettler, H. R. (2021). An examination of probation officer tasks by officer-caseload type. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 32, 693–717.

Matejkowski, J., Han, W., & Conrad, A. (2020). Voluntariness of treatment, mental health service utilization, and quality of life among mental health court participants. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 26, 185–197.

McNiel, D. E., & Binder, R. L. (2007). Effectiveness of a mental health court in reducing criminal recidivism and violence. American Journal of Psychiatry, 164, 1395–1403.

Mulvey, P., & Larson, M. (2019). Assessing the influence of risk/need domains on probation completion among a sample of offenders with mental illness. Journal of Crime and Justice, 42, 462–479.

Oostermeijer, S., Morgan, A. J., Ross, A. M., Grimmond, T., & Reavley, N. J. (2023). Stigmatising attitudes of probation, parole and custodial officers towards people with mental health issues: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 28, 165–199.

Piehowski, V., & Phelps, M. S. (2023). Strong-arm sobriety: Addressing precarity through probation. Law & Social Inquiry, 48, 489–516.

Prins, S. J., & Draper, L. (2009). Improving outcomes for people with mental illnesses under community corrections supervision: A guide to research-informed policy and practice (No. NCJ 227352). National Institute of Corrections.

Robinson, G., & Ugwudike, P. (2012). Investing in ‘toughness’: Probation, enforcement and legitimacy. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 51, 300–316.

Rosenfeld, R., & Grigg, A. (Eds.). (2022). The limits of recidivism: Measuring success after prison. National Academies Press.

Sarteschi, C. M., Vaughn, M. G., & Kim, K. (2011). Assessing the effectiveness of mental health courts: A quantitative review. Journal of Criminal Justice, 39, 12–20.

Sharlein, J. (2018). Beyond recidivism: Investigating comparative educational and employment outcomes for adolescents in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Crime & Delinquency, 64, 26–52.

Skeem, J. L., Encandela, J., & Louden, J. E. (2003). Perspectives on probation and mandated mental health treatment in specialized and traditional probation departments. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 21, 429–458.

Skeem, J. L., & Louden, J. E. (2006). Toward evidence-based practice for probationers and parolees mandated to mental health treatment. Psychiatric Services, 57, 333–342.

Skeem, J. L., Manchak, S., & Montoya, L. (2017). Comparing public safety outcomes for traditional probation vs specialty mental health probation. JAMA Psychiatry, 74, 942–948.

Skeem, J. L., Manchak, S., & Peterson, J. K. (2011). Correctional policy for offenders with mental illness: Creating a new paradigm for recidivism reduction. Law and Human Behavior, 35, 110–126.

Solomon, P., Draine, J., & Marcus, S. C. (2002). Predicting incarceration of clients of a psychiatric probation and parole service. Psychiatric Services, 53, 50–56.

Spitzmueller, M. C. (2018). Remaking “community” mental health: Contested institutional logics and organizational change. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 42, 123–145.

Terpstra, B., & Mulvey, P. (2022). Specialty probation officers as street-level bureaucrats: Exploring how discretion is perceived and employed on a mental health caseload. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 66, 670–693.

Tyler, T. R. (2003). Procedural justice, legitimacy, and the effective rule of law. Crime and Justice, 30, 283–357.

Van Deinse, T. B., Givens, A., Cowell, M., Ghezzi, M., Murray-Lichtman, A., & Cuddeback, G. S. (2022). A randomized trial of specialty mental health probation: Measuring implementation and effectiveness outcomes. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 49, 415–428.

Wolff, N., Epperson, M., Shi, J., Huening, J., Schumann, B. E., & Sullivan, I. R. (2014). Mental health specialized probation caseloads: Are they effective? International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 37, 464–472.

Contributors

Sophia Sarantakos is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Denver in Denver, CO.

Emily Claypool is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Family Medicine and Community Health.

Brianna Suslovic is a PhD candidate in Social Work at the University of Chicago.

Matthew Epperson is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Chicago, where he directs the Smart Decarceration Project.