Dissertation:
My dissertation is titled, “Perceptions of and Approaches to Social Support Exchange
while on Probation.” In this project, I use qualitative methodology to explore how social support
exchange operates for individuals on probation in the St. Louis metropolitan region. It is well
documented that romantic partners can have an immense impact on system impacted persons’
desistance. At the same time, scholars document that the social and financial challenges of
community supervision often cause system-impacted persons to rely on their families for
assistance. However, far less is known about the processes that underlie relationship building and
social support exchange for people under community supervision. In this dissertation, I seek to
broaden existing literature by exploring how people under community supervision access support
from and exchange support with many different people in their lives. Unique to this work, I
examine how friends and acquaintances and how the financial challenges of community
supervision play a role in social support exchange.
While existing research in this area primarily uncovers the potential positive or negative
influences that relationships may exert on criminal behavior, my research uncovers the nuance
associated with probation compliance and how people on probation manage many different
competing interests in an attempt to comply. Broadly, my findings demonstrate how the terms of
probation, aimed at preventing individuals from engaging in future criminal behavior, may
simultaneously disrupt long-standing, supportive relationships; prevent individuals from seeking
out potentially prosocial relationships; and further tether individuals to the criminal legal system.
Participants in this study reported the conditions of their probation were contradictory in that
probation encouraged them to seek out prosocial opportunities, while preventing them from
building or maintaining relationships. In certain cases, probation attempted to prevent contact
between spouses and partners who had criminal convictions. Conditions of compliance (e.g.,
treatment) also prevented individuals from building relationships with potentially supportive
friends and acquaintances. A central concern participants reported were probation violations due
to associating with others on probation. At times, participants discussed that they risked these
probation violations of “association” to gain access to instrumental resources or maintained
emotionally destructive relationships with family members to satisfy housing requirements
associated with probation.