< Previous11 AMERICAN PROBATION AND PAROLE ASSOCIATION THE SIXTH WORLD CONGRESS ON PROBATION AND PAROLE by William D. Burrell T he 6th World Congress on Probation and Parole was held in The Hague, Netherlands, from April 16-18, 2024. Sponsored by the Dutch Probation Service (Reclassering Nederland), it was the largest World Congress so far, with over 500 attendees from 63 countries across the globe. Prior World Congresses were held in London (2013), Los Angeles (2015, co-sponsored by APPA), Tokyo (2017), Sydney (2019), and Ottawa (2022). The Congress is a biennial event, except for Ottawa, which was delayed by the pandemic. The Congress was significant for the Dutch Probation Service, which celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2023. The Service was founded in 1823, some 18 years before John Augustus, the “Father of Probation” in the U.S. began his work as a volunteer probation officer in the courts of Boston. APPA AT THE CONGRESS APPA was well represented at the 6th World Congress. Members of the APPA International Relations Committee (IRC) in attendance included Committee Chair Julie Truschel, Joseph Arvidson, Willow Baker, William Burrell, Debi Koetzel, and Joe Winkler from the U.S. and international members Sylvie Blanchet (Canada), Nancy Nungari (Kenya), Patricia O’Hagan (Northern Ireland), and Stephen Pitts (United Kingdom). APPA Executive Director Veronica Cunningham also attended. The IRC members did more than just attend. As Julie Truschel said, “we were humbled and honored that so many of our committee members were chosen to provide workshops on this global stage.” Seven current IRC members and an APPA past president presented workshops. TITLEPRESENTERS Merging Trauma-Informed Care & Desistance in Probation Supervision Joseph Arvidson* & Nicole Kimberly-Staeheli Probation and Parole: Occupation or Profession?William D. Burrell* From Dealer to Leader: The Power of Lived Experience Julie Truschel* & Billa Nanra Learning from European Experience - Building Probation Capacity and Impact at a Global Level Stephen Pitts* & Leo Tigges Global Collaboration for Evidence-Based Parole: A Path to the Future Sylvie Blanchet*, Ashley Koonce & Jonathan Ogletree Innovations in ProbationJoseph Winkler* What’s in a Name? Assessing Probation Officer Support for the Organizational Coaching Model Debi Koetzle* & Shelley Johnson Professional Values and Skills: The Last Frontier of “What Works” in Probation and Parole Mario Paparozzi (APPA Past President) APPA IRC MEMBER PRESENTATIONS *IRC member12 PERSPECTIVESVOLUME 48, NUMBER 3 FALL 2024 The organizers of the Congress did a marvelous job of organizing and executing the event. It was 2½ days of plenary sessions, workshops, networking opportunities, excellent food and cultural opportunities. Steve Pitts noted how a worldwide community of probation has formed and taken flight. Each World Congress has added people, organizations and nations to this global community. IRC members had uniformly positive experiences at the Congress. Patricia O’Hagan described the Congress as “a melting pot of global minds, united by a commitment to learning and sharing best practices.” Nancy Nungari said, “the networking sessions felt like a warm, large bonfire, as we inspired each other.” Julie Truschel commented: “Many conversations were held over cups of coffee or glasses of wine that initiated relationships to be continued virtually into the future.” One theme that resonated throughout the Congress was the power of relationships. The opening plenary address by Ms. Mpho Tutu von Furth (daughter of Desmond Tutu) set the tone as she discussed restorative relationships that facilitate responsibility, justice, healing, and forgiveness. As Nancy Nungari observed, a theme was woven throughout the Congress, which was the immense impact of relationships in achieving our shared goals for more effective and humane probation and parole practice. A PARALLEL FOCUS ON VOLUNTEERS Running in parallel to the World Congress on Probation and Parole was the second World Congress on Community Volunteers. The 2017 World Congress in Tokyo highlighted the role of the hogoshi, the volunteer probation officers who serve throughout Japan. They are community members who provide supervision, guidance, assistance, and mentoring to persons on probation. There are more than 45,000 hogoshi working in Japan today. The value of community volunteers and the “sheer breadth” of their contributions made a very strong impression on Steve Pitts, who also addressed the Volunteers’ Congress. In addition to representation from the oldest probation services (Netherlands and U.S.), the Congress was attended by some of the youngest, including many from central and eastern Europe. It was exciting to hear how they have been learning and growing as they build their probation and parole services. BUILDING GLOBAL COOPERATION The Congress also saw the renewal of the affiliation agreement between the APPA and Confederations of European Probation (CEP). Plans under the agreement include exchange seminars between the U.S. and European jurisdictions and webinars featuring members of both organizations. A good example of this type of international cooperation was the workshop at the APPA Training Institute in Indianapolis featuring Joe Winkler of the Florida Department of Corrections and Iuliana Carbonaru of the Romanian Probation Service, who is the Vice President of the CEP. One of the unique features of the Congress was the scholarships offered by the Dutch Probation Services to enable staff without resources to attend. I met and had a wonderful conversation with Max van Wersch, a college student and intern with the Dutch Probation Service. I also noted that workshops had many more young probation officers compared with previous Congresses. These attendees added a valuable and extremely current perspective to the discussions about supervision practices. The Congress also benefitted from the presence of academics–some established and others emerging–who enriched discussions about integrating the latest research into policy and daily practice. Based on their new book on global community corrections, Ioan Durnescu (Romania) and Faye Taxman presented four grand challenges for the worldwide probation and parole community to address. They include: Establish Community Corrections as a Stand-alone Sanction Focused on Desistance and Rehabilitation. Support Desistance-Focused Community Corrections through Relationship-Building, Culture Change, and Community Support. Promote Fair and Just Treatment for Individuals on Supervision and Those Working in Community Corrections. Invest in Individuals, Families, Communities, and Community Corrections to Foster Desistance and Rehabilitation.In Use 20 Not In Use 65 Total Phones Active 85 Locations Received 102 Completed 14 Average Time 2h 23m 17s ShadowAlertness Dashboard Institutions On Overnight Hospital Stays LoginReminderLevel 1Level 2Level 3 0 5 10 15 20 Breakdown by Color Stage 05101520 Stonegate Blackwater Clearwater Transforming Corrections with Advanced Intelligence Discover solutions for unmatched safety and efficiency. Explore Our Solutions Providing Solutions to Corrections For Over 25 Years CHECK-IN AVAILABLE14 PERSPECTIVESVOLUME 48, NUMBER 3 FALL 2024 The challenges are discussed in greater detail in the book The Routledge Handbook on Global Community Corrections. https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge- Handbook-on-Global-Community-Corrections/Durnescu- Byrne-Mackey-Taxman/p/book/9781032294919? EXPERTS BY EXPERIENCE As with many recent APPA Institutes and other conferences, the Congress featured sessions with persons with lived experience or, as they were called, “experts by experience.” Julie Truschel interviewed Billa Nanra about his evolution from heroin addiction and dealing to his incarceration and reentry after prison and engagement with the Peace Education Program in prisons and with parolees. Willow Baker was responsible for setting up a viewing of the documentary “The Power to Change” about knife crime in London and programs that are helping, including the Peace Education Program. After viewing the video, one attendee said “I have been a probation officer for decades. I am not easily moved but this film and the presenters really moved me.” That video can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1dYMUo50WM CONCLUSION Willow Baker summed up the event powerfully: “The 6th World Congress on Probation and Parole was likely the most well organized and informative conference I have ever attended. It achieved an excellent balance between entertainment, inspiration, serious work, and sincere collaboration,” Nancy Nugari said: “My big takeaway: the relationships we build–with ourselves, with each other, with our clients and with our stakeholders—are the foundation of our collective success in transforming probation and parole practices globally.” I think it is safe to say that APPA had a major impact on the World Congress, and the Congress did as well on all of us who attended. The success of the 6th World Congress demonstrates to me the recognition of the existence of a global probation and parole community and the responsibilities we all have to one another, to assist developing countries, and to share knowledge among all systems, established and emerging. NEXT UP? At the conclusion of the Congress, the Dutch Probation Service handed off the World Congress responsibility to Indonesia, which will host the 7th World Congress on Probation and Parole in 2026. The flight of the global probation and parole community is well underway, and we look forward to our next touchdown in Bali, Indonesia! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to IRC members Joe Arvidson, Willow Baker, Debi Koetzel, Nancy Nungari, Patricia O’Hagan, Steve Pitts, Julie Truschel and Joe Winkler for sharing their thoughts on the Congress with me. AUTHOR BIO: William D. Burrell is an independent corrections management consultant. 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Additional materials will be mailed to youupon receipt of this form to complete your application) AMERICAN PROBATION AND PAROLE ASSOCIATION Level IV Agency Member Level V Agency Member Affiliate Member Associate Member Corporate Member Educational Institution Library Subscription Lifetime Member (50 - 2 99 staff - 1 year) (1-49 staff - 1 year) (1 year) (1 year) (1 year) (1 year) (1 year) (Lifetime) ( 3 00- 5 99 staff - 1 year) $ 1,500 Level II I Agency MemberLOOKING AT PROBATION IN A WHOLE NEW WAY by Jonathon Fisher “Taping dog’s mouth shut gets him probation in Topeka” (The Associated Press, 2020) “East Boston woman on community supervision makes off with her probation officer’s wallet” (WISN, 2015) “Cold-cocking chiropractor earns Florida man probation” (Cooper, 2015) W hile the above news headlines have been somewhat disguised, the imagery that accompanied the original stories can easily be imagined. We have, after all, become accustomed to the photos of scowling Americans clad in orange jumpsuits illustrating stories about probation. It would also be no great stretch to consider that such imagery may kneecap one’s attempt to return to a law-abiding life. And it can follow one around online forever (Lageson, 2016). Whoever has said there’s no such thing as bad publicity may not have been on probation at the time. The media scorn of probation as a sanction, along with its mockery of those serving a term, is exactly what certain New Yorkers on probation and their neighbors have been trying to undo since January 2018. It was then that a novel “participatory photography” program was brought to the city’s probation agency by a nonprofit organization, Seeing for Ourselves. Seeing for Ourselves equips and trains marginalized individuals to take control of their own public narrative by documenting their lives photographically. It delivers a 12- week college-level program in the art of visual storytelling. The nonprofit then promotes the new imagery in gallery exhibits, publications, film, and social media. Shifting the discourse about people on probation, and probation itself, can have lasting impact on the nearly 3.1 million Americans sentenced to a term of probation in 2022— more than those in jail or prison or out on parole combined (Carrano & Fisher, 2023). This article documents how the program and the practice of participatory photography is helping to change the public image of probation. PROBATION AND THE MEDIA It seems no accident that the “second chance” known as probation was begun in 1841 by Boston bootmaker John Augustus (New York City Department of Probation [NYCDOP], n.d.) here in America, the country that itself was a second chance for so many. The practice entails supervision in the community, generally as an alternative to incarceration. For a century after its institutionalization in the Bay State in 1878, the practice was portrayed by the media as a legitimate criminal justice sanction (Carrano & Fisher, 2023). However, the 1972 to 1992 crime wave (Lancaster, 2017) led the media to begin characterizing probation as a slap on the wrist, if not a joke (Carrano & Fisher, 2023)—an ironic development, as in another apparent reaction to the crime wave this originally rehabilitative practice now turned punitive. After the shift toward increasingly punitive policies took hold, untold numbers of Americans wound up pinballing between probation and prison, continually tripped up by arduous stipulations or mandatory conditions of probation (Pew Charitable Trusts, 2019). Over the ensuing decades, many jurisdictions began to walk back the harsh transformation of probation, and New York City led the way. Its many innovations have turned it into an industry leader and helped make it one of the safest large cities in the country (Carrano & Fisher, 2023; Gordon, 2024). Yet beyond the news headlines, probation remains largely unknown to the public. Both the NYCDOP (Bermudez, 2015) and Seeing for Ourselves (Carrano & Fisher, 2023) believe that the media’s continued scornful portrayal of probation and its mockery of those immersed in this criminal justice intervention may have discouraged reforms elsewhere, preventing the practice from living up to its potential as an alternative to jail or prison. Jurisdictions may have concluded not that probation should be made more effective but that such an effort would not be worth the trouble. (To point out a parallel example of public entities walking away rather than offering obvious countermeasures, government support of New York City’s public housing tended to evaporate in the face of mocking media treatment of the housing projects since the 1970s, as the city and state concluded not that more support was warranted but rather that investment was a losing hand [Carrano et al., 2015].) Recently, a competing narrative to the media’s unflattering treatment of probation has emerged and drawn attention. In this telling, rather than individuals failing probation, the justice intervention itself fails those whom it serves (Harding et al., 2022). While some see this outlook as leverage for legislative reform, others see it as a call for abolishing the practice altogether (Schiraldi, 2023). This continued focus on failure, while characteristic of a national media that has adopted an “If it bleeds, it leads” outlook, may not be as helpful to criminal justice as a different narrative altogether. SEEING FOR OURSELVES Seeing for Ourselves initially brought a similar participatory photography program to the city’s public housing agency from 2010 to 2013 to counter a generation-long focus by the national and local media on crime and disrepair that undermined city and state support of these beleaguered communities.The most revealing imagery was combined with a backstory about public housing in the globally acclaimed, award-winning Project Lives (Carrano et al., 2015). That work created a new visual narrative—one that brought the city and state back to the funding table (Fisher, 2021). Evidently persuaded by this success and encouraged by an award to the nonprofit by the National Endowment for the Arts at the end of 2017, NYC asked the nonprofit FALL 202419 AMERICAN PROBATION AND PAROLE ASSOCIATION FALL 2024 to next deliver its programming to New Yorkers on probation. While Seeing for Ourselves had previous experience in public housing when setting out on its first initiative, it possessed no background in criminal justice. It would face a steep learning curve. THE PROBATION PHOTOGRAPHY PROGRAM Centered around a 12-week course delivered by the nonprofit’s embedded photography teacher, “NeON:Photography” took its place at the NYCDOP as one of a variety of programs of the agency’s Neighborhood Opportunity Network (NeON) that served the seven underserved communities where most individuals on probation live: the South Bronx, Harlem, Jamaica, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Brownsville, and the north shore of Staten Island. In the program’s inaugural implementation with those on probation, hundreds either shared high-end, digital single-lens reflex cameras donated by Sigma Corporation of America and Seeing for Ourselves or opted for the alternative of using their own smartphone. Like other NeON offerings (including music, poetry, and wellness), the course was open to community members generally, not solely those serving a term of probation. This element of NYCDOP practice aimed at reducing the stigma associated with justice involvement (Carrano & Fisher, 2023). Starting up slowly in the spring of 2018, with the nonprofit an unknown entity in these communities, NeON:Photography would before long be swamped by applications. Reportedly, the waiting list now numbers over 500 (American Probation and Parole Association [APPA], 2023). The course has led to thousands of dollars in stipends paid to participants by the city in the interest of job readiness for engaging in the program even as Seeing for Ourselves turned over half its National Endowment for the Arts grant to the participant photographers. Meanwhile, according to NYCDOP officials, thousands of economic opportunities have been created in the form of paid teaching jobs and photo shoots along with photograph sales. This allowed for new careers to be launched, and others turbocharged (APPA, 2023). Entire lives began to change as participatory photography drove home that everyone has a unique own point of view—a revelation to some (Fisher, 2021).Next >