Community supervision is a major form of criminal punishment and a major driver of mass incarceration. Over 3.5 million people in the United States are serving terms of probation, parole, or supervised release, and revocations account for nearly half of all prison admissions. Although supervision is intended to prevent crime and promote reentry, it can also interfere with the defendant’s reintegration by imposing onerous restrictions as well as punishment for non-criminal technical violations. Probation officers also carry heavy caseloads, which forces them to spend more time on enforcing conditions and less on providing support.
Fortunately, the criminal justice system also includes a mechanism to solve these problems: early termination of community supervision. From the beginning, the law has always provided a way for the government to cut short a defendant’s term of supervision if they could demonstrate that they had reformed themselves. Recently, judges, correctional officials, and activists have called to increase rates of early termination in order to save resources, ease the reentry process, and encourage rehabilitation. Yet despite all this attention from the field, there are no law-review articles on terminating supervision early.
In this Article, I provide the first comprehensive analysis of early termination of community supervision. First, I recount the long history of early termination, from the invention of probation and parole in the 1800s to the Safer Supervision Act of 2023. Next, I identify and critique recent legal changes that have made it harder for federal criminal defendants to win early termination of supervised release. Finally, I propose the first empirically based sentencing guideline on terminating supervision early, which I recommend in most cases after 18 to 36 months. If community supervision drives mass incarceration, then early termination offers a potential tool for criminal justice reform. American Criminal Law Review, Forthcoming, 2024.
By Joe Russo, Samuel Peterson, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson
Racial and ethnic disparities are pervasive in the U.S. criminal justice system. These disparities often compound as an individual progresses through each stage of the justice system, beginning with police contact and continuing through prosecution and correctional control. Not surprisingly, people of color are overrepresented in the probation and parole population, yet relatively little attention has been paid to disparate treatment and outcomes at this stage.
Probation and parole staff and other system actors exercise considerable discretion in responding to technical violations. Technical violations are instances of noncompliance with the conditions of supervision — such as failing to report to the supervising officer, leaving the jurisdiction without permission, and testing positive on a drug test—that, while not criminal, can lead to severe consequences for justice-involved individuals. The spectrum of responses to technical violations can range from a warning all the way up to a recommendation to revoke supervision. Evidence suggests that technical violations are an important driver of incarceration.
The handling of technical violations may be influenced by a variety of factors, including officer judgment and jurisdictional policy, and there is evidence of racial and ethnic disparities in how they are handled. Ultimately, disparities in the processing of technical violations can exacerbate and perpetuate existing disparities in incarceration and undermine the legitimacy of the justice system. This report presents findings and recommendations from an expert panel that explored challenges and opportunities associated with reducing disparities at the technical violation decision point.
Key Findings
The lack of evidence on the sources of disparities in community supervision contributes to a lack of known approaches for responding to them.
The working relationship between an officer and a supervisee is critical to successful outcomes.
A lack of diversity or cultural sensitivity among officers and supervisee perceptions of justice system illegitimacy can be barriers to forming quality relationships of trust.
Research is needed to determine the impacts of (1) such factors as the working relationship between and officer and a supervisee, a lack of diversity or cultural sensitivity among officers, and supervisee perceptions of justice system illegitimacy on supervisee violation behaviors, (2) responses to these behaviors, and (3) disparities.
Supervisees of color often have inequitable access to resources, which can be a barrier to successful completion of supervision and a contributing factor in disparate outcomes.
Information management tools are needed to increase transparency about and accountability for disparities.
Jurisdictions would benefit from developing data dashboards to help track, analyze, and display key metrics so that progress may be measured — and corrective actions taken as needed — at the officer and agency levels.
Recommendations
Develop best practices for the use of technology to eliminate barriers to compliance. Evaluate pros, cons, and impacts of these approaches on outcomes and disparities.
Develop best practices and strategies to directly provide resources (e.g., food pantries, clothing, transit vouchers) to disadvantaged supervisees and/or coordinate with community resources to provide these services. Explore the feasibility of monetary assistance for sustenance and/or emergency support.
Conduct research into supervisee perceptions of the justice system’s legitimacy along racial and ethnic lines and the impact of these perceptions on compliance and outcomes.
Conduct research to determine whether the use of credible messengers improves relationships with supervisees and to examine the impact of this practice on supervision outcomes.
Study jurisdictions that have reduced disparities to better understand the dynamics associated with successful outcomes and to develop an evidence base of effective strategies.
Conduct research to determine the impacts of more-general system reforms (e.g., caps on probation sentences, reductions in the number of technical violations) on disparities in technical violation behaviors, responses, and outcomes.
Develop management tools (e.g., dashboards) to track disparity metrics, in near real time, at the agency, supervisor, and officer levels to promote transparency and accountability and to identify patterns to be investigated and addressed (e.g., coachable moments for staff, policy or program review).
Reinforce supervision practices in which staff actively engage in barrier-reduction strategies to "meet supervisees where they are" in terms of appropriate accommodations and service delivery that do not compromise public safety.
Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 32p.
By Bradley Read
This article suggests that the parole dossier may be working to damage prisoners’ sense of their identity through the creation of a carceral script which describes a person whom they do not recognise as themselves, and which leads to an increased narrative labour. Prisoners struggle, therefore, under that labour to form a post-offence identity with which to navigate a complex process such as parole. As identity, and its repair, appear instrumental to desistance, elements of the process, such as the dossier, could be putting hopes of rehabilitation at risk. Using the analysis of 15 prisoner interviews, this article explores a parole process described as undermining agency. A process where risk assessment is perceived poorly and where ultimately the experience can lead to negative impacts on an already fragile self-identity. In conclusion, this article attempts to offer some solutions, to mitigate the negative effects, with a view to maximising the potential impact of the dossier process on future desistance, through the more meaningful involvement of the prisoner at its centre.
Criminology & Criminal Justice Volume 0: Ahead of Print, 2024.
By Hilde Tubex and Natalie Gately
This paper contributes to the growing body of scholarship related to the impact of imprisonment on families, from the particular perspective of parents, siblings and other close relatives of people serving a life sentence. We argue that those family members are often overlooked in research and service provision, while bearing the burden of the association with the offender. This is particularly problematic for relatives of life sentenced prisoners, having to cope with the seriousness of the offence, and the uncertainty of the perspectives of release. Based on 17 interviews conducted in Western Australia, we discuss family members’ confrontation with and experiences throughout the criminal justice system. We report on how they manage to “live with life” and which coping mechanisms they developed. Our findings call for more investment into the matter, to generate a scholarship for a better understanding of and supporting initiatives for those close relatives.
Journal of Criminology, 2023. Online first
By Criminal Justice Testing and Evaluation Consortium
This technology brief is the third document in a four-part series (Figure 1) on technologies to support the monitoring and supervision of individuals on pretrial release, probation, and parole (i.e., community supervision). The goal of this series is to offer foundational insights from use cases, examine the challenges of community supervision, highlight example products, and discuss the future of select technologies and their implications for community supervision. This brief highlights technologies and solutions used to monitor alcohol and drug use for persons on community supervision.
CJTEC Retrieved October, 2023.
By Nathan W. Link, Kathleen Powell, Jordan M. Hyatt, and Ebony L. Ruhland
Monetary sanctions levied on individuals on probation and parole may dramatically influence their ability to reintegrate into the community and to complete their community supervision. Yet very little work has empirically assessed how agencies respond to these obligations. This is critical, given that individuals under community supervision occupy a liminal space: free in the community yet often at risk of violation, rearrest, additional fines, or re-incarceration. In this article, we introduce an approach to the collection and management of monetary sanctions by an adult probation and parole agency in one Pennsylvania county. This specialized department focuses solely on repayment of fines, fees, and costs for a subset of probationers and parolees who have completed all other supervision requirements. We complement the conceptual overview by presenting administrative data on this caseload (N = 5,811) to describe the population under supervision and assess the factors associated with debt amount, having difficulty with repayment, and being the subject of an enforcement action for non-payment. We conclude with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of this model compared with historical and other existing models of debt enforcement during community supervision.
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, Volume 37, Issue 1, February 2021, Pages 128-147
By Annie Harper, Callie Ginapp, Tommaso Bardelli, Alyssa Grimshaw & Marissa Justen & Alaa Mohamedali & Isaiah Thomas & Lisa Puglisi
People involved with the criminal justice system in the United States are disproportionately low-income and indebted. The experience of incarceration intensifies financial hardship, including through worsening debt. Little is known about how people who are incarcerated and their families are impacted by debt and how it affects their reentry experience. We conducted a scoping review to identify what is known about the debt burden on those who have been incarcerated and their families and how this impacts their lives. We searched 14 databases from 1990 to 2019 for all original research addressing financial debt held by those incarcerated in the United States, and screened articles for relevance and extracted data from pertinent studies. These 31 studies selected for inclusion showed that this population is heavily burdened by debt that was accumulated in three general categories: debt directly from criminal justice involvement such as LFOs, pre-existing debt that compounded during incarceration, and debts accrued during reentry for everyday survival. Debt was generally shown to have a negative effect on financial well-being, reentry, family structure, and mental health. Debts from LFOs and child support are very common among the justice-involved population and are largely unpayable. Other forms of debt likely to burden this population remain largely understudied. Extensive reform is necessary to lessen the burden of debt on the criminal justice population in order to improve reentry outcomes and quality of life.
American Journal of Criminal Justice (2021) 46:250–278
By Michael LaForest
Nearly three-fourths of incarcerated individuals are released under parole supervision in the United States. However, relatively little is known about the effects of supervised release. In this work, I first investigate the effects of early release from prison using the quasi-random assignment of interviewers to parole hearings in Pennsylvania. I find that, at the margin of release, individuals initially paroled experience higher rates of post-release recidivism than individuals released at a later date. Second, I separately identify the effects of the three major components of parole supervision – (1) supervision intensity, (2) special conditions such as curfew or placement in a halfway house, and (3) the assigned parole officer who manages supervision – by leveraging three separate quasi-random assignment mechanisms in Pennsylvania. Along most margins, I find that increased supervision leads to additional parole violations with little effect on future arrests or employment.
Draft Paper, 2022. 41p.
By Rob Allen
The aim of this paper is to identify whether the specific developmental needs of young adults are taken into account by courts when making decisions about whether to remand defendants into custody. In particular it looks at: ■ whether there are provisions in the law which require a distinctive approach to young adults at the remand stage of criminal proceedings ■ whether the criminal justice agencies and courts consider the maturity of young adult defendants when making decisions about remanding them ■ the adequacy of alternatives to remand in custody available for young adults, particularly young women, people from BAME backgrounds and defendants with mental health problems ■ the impact of proposals made by the Government, including those in the White Paper ‘A Smarter Approach to Sentencing’, on young adult bail and remand decisions and ■ what measures could be taken to improve the distinctiveness of remand arrangements for young adults
London: Barrow Cadbury Trust, 2021.40p.
By Rob Allen and Laura Janes
There has been a growing recognition of the distinct needs of young adults in the criminal justice process, largely due to the work of the Transition to Adulthood Alliance. However, the extent to which the criminal justice system meets the needs of young adults aged 18-25 who go through the parole process has received very little attention. The vast majority of young adults considered by the Parole Board (the Board) have not been designated as “dangerous” by a sentencing court and have been recalled to prison for failing to comply with the terms of their licence after their automatic release. A small minority have been designated as “dangerous” at the point of sentence which means the court has formed the view that they are at risk of committing further offences that will cause serious harm. In these cases, the Board is required to consider whether they can be safely released from prison without putting the public at risk of serious harm. Young adults, currently defined by the Board as 18 to 21 year olds, only make up around 2% of the Board’s overall case load. Young adults are much less likely to have been deemed dangerous by the courts compared to the other cases the Board reviews. …
London: Barrow Cadbury Trust , 2023. 56p.
Kyle J. Bares1, Thomas J. Mowen
Emerging research has shown that the parole officer, much like friends and family, can be an important source of social support for returning persons. While this body of literature is growing, existing research provides little insight into understanding how specific types (e.g., interpersonal and/or professional) of parole officer support matter. Using panel data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative, results of mixed-effects models demonstrate that greater levels of parole officer support are associated with decreased odds of reincarceration. Furthermore, parole officer professional support (e.g., providing correct information) exerts a more robust effect than interpersonal support (e.g., listening and caring). Findings suggest policy makers should consider programming to strengthen the professional relationship between the parole officer and returning person.
Crime Delinq. 2020 June ; 66(6-7): 1023–1051
By Shawn Bushway
Job training programs for people under supervision have been based on an economic framework that identifies individuals involved in crime as a disadvantaged group with poor human capital. The best available research evidence has not found that these programs consistently improve employment outcomes. This article reviews the evidence for the effectiveness of standard job training programs and then examines new developments in the field that use alternative frameworks for understanding the roles of such programs. The first alternative is signaling: how people under community supervision use the completion of job training to signal to employers and others that the behavior that led to their conviction is either anomalous or no longer representative of them. The second alternative is a model of desistance known as identity change: the ways in which job training can help individuals solidify a new, more prosocial identity. I make sense of extant work and new alternatives and provide a set of recommendations for change in the community supervision system.
ANNALS, AAPSS, 701, May 2022
By Leah Wang and gabriel sayegh
In the United States, the number of people under the surveillance of probation and parole systems is nearly twice the number of those behind bars. Community supervision, which refers mainly to probation and parole, is “too big to succeed.” (Simply defined, probation is a court-ordered “suspended” sentence served in the community, typically with a set period of supervision; parole is a conditional release after incarceration.) This is true throughout the country — and Connecticut is no exception, particularly in terms of its outsize probation system, which jeopardizes the well-being and progress of more than 30,000 people and their families. Chronically underfunded and overly punitive, probation rarely serves as an alternative to incarceration, as it was originally intended. And people released from prison to parole supervision often struggle to rebuild their lives during the reentry process….
Easthampton, MA: Prison Policy initiative, 2023. 20p.
By Liz Komar, Ashley Nellis; and Kristen M. Budd
As the United States marks 50 years of mass incarceration, dramatic change is necessary to ensure another 50 do not follow. In no small part due to long sentences, the United States has one of the world’s highest incarceration rates, with nearly two million people in prisons and jails. The destabilizing force of mass incarceration deepens social and economic inequity – families lose not only a loved one, but income and childcare. By age 14, one in 14 children in the United States experience a parent leaving for jail or prison.3 Individuals returning to the community face profound barriers to employment and housing. Meantime the communities most impacted by crime – poor communities and communities of color – disproportionately bear the burden of incarceration’s impacts. Long sentences affect young Black men disproportionately compared to every other race and age group. Twice as many Black children as white children have experienced parental incarceration.6 Mass incarceration entrenches cycles of harm, trauma, and disinvestment and consumes funds that might support investment in interventions that empower communities and create lasting safety. In the United States, over half of people in prison are serving a decade or longer and one in seven incarcerated people are serving a life sentence.8 To end mass incarceration, the United States must dramatically shorten sentences. Capping sentences for the most serious offenses at 20 years and shifting sentences for all other offenses proportionately downward, including by decriminalizing some acts, is a vital decarceration strategy to arrive at a system that values human dignity and prioritizes racial equity. This report begins by examining the evidence in support of capping sentences at 20 years. Countries such as Germany and Norway illustrate that sentences can be far shorter without sacrificing public safety. A wealth of criminological evidence makes clear that unduly long sentences are unnecessary: people age out of crime, and even the general threat of long term imprisonment is an ineffective deterrent. m Prison Sentence
Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 21p
By Justice Policy Institute
The Maryland Parole Commission (MPC) suffers from a series of systemic problems that result in the parole system’s inability to conduct its duties effectively. Safe at Home assesses how well parole practices in Maryland are aligned with other states, identifies inefficiencies in release decision-making, and provides options for changes to policy and practice informed by best practices in the field.
JPI conducted a comprehensive analysis of national parole practices and identified several policy options grounded in best practices in parole decision-making and supervision. JPI identified these policies by conducting interviews with system and field experts, attorneys, community members, and those with lived experience. These policy options are a mere blueprint that can help guide legislative and administrative actions better align the MPC with best practices across the country. Maryland decision-makers must now solicit input from a broad range of stakeholders, including community members, to operationalize these options into policy.
The MPC should adopt a structured decision-making tool that incorporates a validated needs assessment tool.
The MPC should operate under the presumption that the goals of punishment have been met at the time of initial parole eligibility. Parole release decision-making should be based solely on objective factors related to an individual’s future risk to public safety.
Supervision should be imposed selectively, with the length and conditions of supervision linked to risk. Conditions should be the least restrictive necessary to meet the goals of reentry and public safety. Resources should be frontloaded, and people should have the opportunity to shorten their parole term through good behavior.
The MPC should work closely with other criminal justice agencies and support agencies to develop a parole release plan that supports a successful reentry.
The MPC should employ transparency in parole release decision-making protocol and practices. The applicant and victim should be fully informed of the process and be allowed to participate actively.
Reasons for denial of parole must be made public, documented in writing, and appealable.
An applicant should have access to counsel and be provided all materials that the MPC will use to make its decision in advance of a hearing.
Establish standards for parole board member eligibility, including education and work/life experience.
The parole board must have transparent rules and procedures that reflect the input of all interested parties.
The parole board should adopt a robust set of performance measures that are publicly reported regularly.
JPI works with state leaders and community stakeholders to advance comprehensive policy options for consideration by the Maryland General Assembly, the Maryland Parole Commission, and other state decision-makers. Our work in Maryland is part of our broader efforts, in places like the District of Columbia, to draw attention to the harms of mass incarceration and long prison terms and support evidence-based reforms that provide options to earn release and safely return home.
Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute, 2023. 59p.
By Elias Neibart
In September 2021, New York Governor Kathy Hochul quietly signed into law the Less Is More: Community Supervision Revocation Reform Act, the state’s fourth major criminal justice reform enacted in the past three years. Less Is More made dramatic changes to the state’s parole system, specifically:
Creating a system of earned time credits to incentivize good behavior;
Significantly limiting reincarceration for “technical” violations of the terms of parole (i.e., a violation other than committing a new crime), and shortening the length of reincarceration;
Limiting the presumption of detention for parole violators, such that technical violators are detained only if they abscond, and criminal violators detained only if a judge rules them at risk of absconding;
Raising the burden of proof at revocation hearings and expediting their processing time;
Shifting revocation hearings to court rooms and otherwise giving them the trappings of a court proceeding.
These changes, supporters argued, were necessary to minimize the unnecessary and counterproductive reincarceration of petty technical violators—the parolee who is on the straight and narrow but who nonetheless finds himself back in prison due to a minor slip-up. In making these changes, however, they also made it harder to detain many serious offenders, including serious criminal violators; evidence from NYC jails show that detention of even violent criminal violators fell in the wake of Less Is More. In addition, it created a greater burden on victims, who are often now involved in revocation hearings in addition to new criminal proceedings. This, we argue, is due to the broad-reaching procedural changes enacted by Less Is More. The lost presumption of detention, heightened evidentiary standards, and constraints placed on the use of technical violations—all of which apply not only to petty technical violators but to more dangerous parolees—have defanged the supervision system. While reforms that reward good behavior and do not over-punish minor violations are desirable, we propose a series of changes to blunt the unintended effects on the more serious offender population. Specifically, we suggest several reforms of the reform....
New York: Manhattan Institute, 2022. 28p.
By Elias Neibart
In September 2021, New York Governor Kathy Hochul quietly signed into law the Less Is More: Community Supervision Revocation Reform Act, the state’s fourth major criminal justice reform enacted in the past three years. Less Is More made dramatic changes to the state’s parole system, specifically: Creating a system of earned time credits to incentivize good behavior;Significantly limiting reincarceration for “technical” violations of the terms of parole (i.e., a violation other than committing a new crime), and shortening the length of reincarceration;Limiting the presumption of detention for parole violators, such that technical violators are detained only if they abscond, and criminal violators detained only if a judge rules them at risk of absconding;Raising the burden of proof at revocation hearings and expediting their processing time;Shifting revocation hearings to court rooms and otherwise giving them the trappings of a court proceeding. These changes, supporters argued, were necessary to minimize the unnecessary and counterproductive reincarceration of petty technical violators—the parolee who is on the straight and narrow but who nonetheless finds himself back in prison due to a minor slip-up. In making these changes, however, they also made it harder to detain many serious offenders, including serious criminal violators; evidence from NYC jails show that detention of even violent criminal violators fell in the wake of Less Is More. In addition, it created a greater burden on victThis, we argue, is due to the broad-reaching procedural changes enacted by Less Is More. The lost presumption of detention, heightened evidentiary standards, and constraints placed on the use of technical violations—all of which apply not only to petty technical violators but to more dangerous parolees—have defanged the supervision system. While reforms that reward good behavior and do not over-punish minor violations are desirable, we propose a series of changes to blunt the unintended effects on the more serious offender population. Specifically, we suggest several reforms of the reformims, who are often now involved in revocation hearings in addition to new criminal proceedings.
New York: Manhattan Institute, 2022. 28p.
By Coral Sirdifield, Charlie Brooker, Rebecca Marples
A narrative systematic review was undertaken of the literature concerning the health of people on probation or parole (community supervision). In this paper, we provide an up-to-date summary of what is known about substance misuse in this context. This includes estimates of the prevalence and complexity of substance misuse in those under community supervision, and studies of the effectiveness of approaches to treating substance misuse and engaging and retaining this population in treatment. A total of 5125 papers were identified in the initial electronic searches, and after careful double-blind review only 31 papers related to this topic met our criteria. In addition, a further 15 background papers were identified which are reported. We conclude that internationally there is a high prevalence and complexity of substance misuse amongst people under community supervision. Despite clear benefits to individuals and the wider society through improved health, and reduced re-offending; it is still difficult to identify the most effective ways of improving health outcomes for this group in relation to substance misuse from the research literature. Further research and investment is needed to support evidence-based commissioning by providing a detailed and up-to-date profile of needs and the most effective ways of addressing them, and sufficient funds to ensure that appropriate treatment is available and its impact can be continually measured. Without this, it will be impossible to truly establish effective referral and treatment pathways providing continuity of care for individuals as they progress through, and exit, the criminal justice pathway.
Forensic Science International: Mind and Law 1 (2020) 100031
By Kendra Bradner, Vincent Schiraldi, Natasha Mejia, and Evangeline Lopoo
This research brief offers an initial analysis of newly-released data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which report on the number of people under probation and parole supervision in 2017 and 2018. This brief seeks to put the data into the context of historical and international community supervision trends and to examine supervision rates through a racial equity lens. The authors find that, while there has been an observable decline in the number of people under community supervision, the United States continues to maintain high rates of community supervision compared to historic rates, as well as compared to European rates. Further, community supervision is still marked by significant racial disparities and “mass supervision” continues to be a major contributor to mass incarceration. Finally, from 2008 to 2018, the decline in the number of people on probation has failed to keep pace with the decline in arrests, resulting in an increase in the rate of probation, per arrest. The authors recommend that policymakers address points of racial and ethnic disparity, shorten parole supervision periods and allow people to reduce their supervision periods through compliant behavior, eliminate incarceration as a response to non-criminal technical violations, and invest savings in initiatives co-designed with impacted communities.
New York: Columbia University Justice Lab, 2020. 25p.
By Allison Frankel
Probation and parole in the United States are promoted as alternatives to incarceration that help people get back on their feet. But in reality, arbitrary and overly harsh supervision regimes are driving high numbers of people into jail and prison—feeding mass incarceration. Given generations of structural racism, Black and brown people are disproportionately subjected to supervision and incarcerated for violations. Based on 164 interviews and new data analysis, this joint report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) documents the tripwires that lead people from supervision to incarceration in three US states where the problem is particularly acute: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Revoked: How Probation and Parole Feed Mass Incarceration in the United States finds that supervision systems in the three states impose wide-ranging and unnecessarily onerous conditions, and in large part fail to connect people with the resources they need to comply. As a result, many people wind up incarcerated for violations involving drug use, failing to report address changes, and public order offenses like disorderly conduct. At root, these violations often stem from poverty and a lack of support to address underlying health, housing, or other problems. Incarceration is a grossly disproportionate response, and further upends their lives. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU urge governments to divest from supervision and incarceration and invest in jobs, housing, and health care. The report also provides detailed recommendations authorities should follow to substantially reduce the use of supervision and limit incarceration for violations.
New York: Human Rights Watch and American Civil Liberties Union, 2020. 231p.