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Officer discretion, not written policy, determines supervision outcomes.

This was the most consistent theme across the data. Participants under every type of supervision described the same conditions producing opposite outcomes depending on the officer assigned to them. The same behaviors (e.g., a relapse, a missed curfew, a delay in finding employment, a fight) drew patience and a treatment referral from one officer, and a violation threat, retaliation, or a return to custody from another. Participants therefore experienced supervision less as a policy regime than as a matter of who they happened to be assigned. This has particular consequences during a disaster. When formal policy collapsed during COVID-19, and participants reported that “there was no policy to handle it,” discretion was the only thing still operating, and both its protective and its punitive extremes were amplified.