“It’s a Double-Edged Sword”: Proximal Affinity in Relationships Between Rural Parole Officers and Parolees

Abstract

Rural parole officers and people under their parole supervision indisputably face major challenges as they jointly navigate reentry. Such challenges include obtaining employment, accessing substance use and mental health treatment services, and navigating felony-related stigma. Utilizing 120 interviews conducted with parole officers and people on parole in Wyoming, we argue that proximal affinity – the degree to which individuals relate to and empathize with others based on their perceptions of one another as potential or actual neighbors in community – directly impacts the parole supervision relationship and, when exercised positively, may even help to explain why, despite rural areas’ extremely limited or even nonexistent numbers of reentry services, rural people on parole recidivate less often their peers in more populous areas.