By Alex Roth, Sandhya Kajeepeta, and Alex Boldin

Probation—a court-ordered period of supervision in the community for people convicted of criminal charges—has traditionally been viewed as an alternative to incarceration, and sentencing more people to probation rather than prison was long proposed as a solution to the problem of mass incarceration. (See “A brief history of probation” on page 2.) However, as the number of people on probation in the United States has grown massively and probation supervision has become more punitive over the past few decades, more recent reports have focused on how probation is contributing to mass incarceration. These reports explain how increasingly large numbers of people are having their probation supervision revoked and are then being sentenced to incarceration, often for noncompliance with conditions of supervision rather than new criminal charges. Although most of these reports mention both prisons and jails when discussing how probation violations have contributed to mass incarceration, they provide almost no specific information about how such violations affect jail populations. The information about probation’s impact on jails included in some of these reports is often extremely old and sometimes incorrect, propagated from reports that cite previous reports in a sort of game of statistical “telephone.” Meanwhile, other reports simply acknowledge the reality that there is no good national data on how probation contributes to incarceration in local jails. The lack of information about probation’s impact on jail populations is problematic because far more people are admitted to jails than prisons every year and jails are a driving force in mass incarceration generally, and jail populations are also marked by significant racial disparities. This brief will summarize what we do know about probation and how it can contribute to jail populations. It will also present an analysis of data from nine cities and counties participating in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a national initiative that seeks to address over-incarceration by changing the way the  United States thinks about and uses jails. The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) was able to obtain more detailed jail data from these sites than is available at the national level. This analysis offers examples of how probation affects jail incarceration and the kind of data and analysis that is needed at the national level. Finally, this brief will highlight work being done in two SJC sites—St. Louis County, Missouri, and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania— to reduce the number of people on probation in their jails. This brief is intended both to spur greater consideration of the problem of probation’s contribution to jail populations and to suggest ways to address it.  

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2021. 50p.

By Connie Utada, Rebecca Smith,  April Rodriguez

Adults on probation—supervision imposed by the court generally in lieu of incarceration—are more than twice as likely to have a serious or moderate mental illness as those in the general public, according to analysis of federal data from 2015 to 2019 by The Pew Charitable Trusts. This translates into over 830,000 adults with a mental illness who are on probation at any given time each year, or almost a quarter of all those on probation. Most of these individuals also have a co-occurring substance use disorder, with the rate of adults on probation with both a mental illness and substance abuse disorder over five times that of adults in the public. A recent survey of probation agencies nationwide conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in partnership with Pew and the American Probation and Parole Association indicated that although agencies were aware that 20% to 25% of people under their supervision had mental health issues, most agencies did not have specialized mental health approaches and provided their officers with limited training related to mental health. Some officers who were interviewed said that they lacked the tools needed to successfully supervise people with a mental illness on probation, and that many people with a mental illness are placed on probation because other alternatives that don’t involve the justice system—such as diversion to treatment—aren’t being used or aren’t available.1 This lack of resources may be contributing to poorer criminal justice outcomes for people with a mental illness who are on probation, such as an increased likelihood of being arrested or going to prison. Some of the research’s key findings: People with a mental illness are more likely to be on probation than those without, and this disparity was even more pronounced for women and those with a co-occurring substance use disorder. Analysis of data from 2015 to 2019 showed that: Almost 3.5% of adults with a mental illness were on probation annually, compared with 1.7% of all adults. Among adults with co-occurring disorders, 8.5% were on probation annually. Women with a mental illness on probation were overrepresented relative to men. While 21% of all people on probation had a mental illness, the share of women on probation with a mental illness (31%) was almost twice that of men (16%). Many people on probation with a mental illness have more criminal justice contacts than those on probation without a mental illness. Adults with a mental illness who reported being on probation at some point during the year were more likely to be arrested during that year than those without a mental illness. ° Individuals with a mental illness who were on probation were more likely to go to prison for a new offense or for violating probation terms than those without a mental illness. Among people who were sent to prison from probation, those with a mental illness reported being arrested more often, going to prison more often, and being on probation more times than those without a mental illness. Many probation agencies lack the tools to support officers in supervising people with a mental illness, such as specialized approaches, staff training, and flexibility in setting supervision conditions. Among all responding agencies, 41% indicated they had a specialized mental health approach; among rural agencies, this dropped to 26%. 

North Carolina: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2024, 28p.