By Ammar Khalid, Rochisha Shukla, Arielle Jackson, and Andreea Matei

Pima County, Arizona, has implemented multiple reforms to address probation-related drivers of jail incarceration through its participation in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, including strengthening transitional housing support intended to provide short-term housing options for people experiencing housing instability. The Urban Institute conducted a study, in partnership with the Pima County Adult Probation Department, to describe probation pathways to jail incarceration and system-level trends, as well as the effects of providing transitional housing support to people on probation, particularly in terms of jail use.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Many jurisdictions across the country have implemented strategies to reduce jail incarceration for people on probation because probation violations contribute significantly to rising jail populations in the United States: 33 percent of all people incarcerated in jails were arrested while on probation, and 27 percent of the people in jails for probation violations were incarcerated for technical violations alone. Housing instability can heighten the risk of criminal legal system involvement, particularly for people on probation.

WHAT WE FOUND

Our main takeaways include the following:

Roughly 10 percent of all jail bookings in Pima County were due to probation violations, representing an overall low share of jail admissions. However, average length of stay for people in jail for probation violations was considerably longer at 66 days, nearly three times as long as that for the pretrial population (25 days) and five times as long as that for the sentenced population (13 days).

Probation violations resulting in jail incarceration represented 16 percent of all terminated probation cases and were largely driven by technical violations, which include absconding charges.

There were some observable racial and ethnic disparities in jail use as a formal probation revocation petition outcome. Native American and Hispanic people had higher odds—by 97 percent and 46 percent, respectively—of being revoked to jail compared with white people. Black people were 24 percent more likely to receive coterminous outcomes compared with white people.

Between January 2020 and June 2022, 331 people received financial assistance to access transitional housing. The number of people receiving assistance increased over time and the probation department prioritized people with higher risk and needs when making decisions about funding for transitional housing.

The odds of a probation termination to jail were not significantly different for people who received funding for transitional housing and those who did not. These null effects, however, could owe to the small number of people served and the limited data available on people who received transitional housing support. Interviewed stakeholders, though, perceived this support for people on probation to be a crucial stabilizing force and extremely meaningful to their well-being.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2023. 63p.

By Erin Harbinson, Kelly Lyn Mitchell, Courtney Hougham, and Danette Buskovick

This report details a collaboration between the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice (the Robina Institute) and Hennepin County Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation (DOCCR) to examine whether probation conditions are aligned with evidence-based practices in corrections, specifically the risk-needs-responsivity (RNR) principles (i.e., Andrews, Bonta, & Hoge, 1990) for community supervision, and to explore the effect of alignment on supervision outcomes. This project was conceived in order to test whether there is a need to bridge the sentencing process with the RNR principles followed by DOCCR. Research suggests that in order to reduce re-offending, probation conditions should reflect RNR principles and that over-supervising low risk individuals can increase recidivism (Lowenkamp, Latessa, & Holsinger, 2006). But because sentencing often occurs before the risk assessment has been completed, the probation conditions imposed at sentencing may not relate to the probationer’s risk and needs, or may require a higher degree of contact and intervention by the corrections department than suggested by the probationer’s risk to reoffend. Since Hennepin prepares a presentence investigation (PSI) for some cases and administers a pre-screener for others, this practice provides a natural “experiment” to explore how assessment might influence conditions. The project explored the relationship between the sentencing process and RNR principles by asking the following three questions: 1. How well do the risk/needs of offenders align with probation conditions? 2. Does the timing of assessment impact this alignment? 3. Are supervision outcomes improved when conditions are aligned with risk/needs? Key Findings The key findings from this study were as follows: • Most people on probation were assigned a similar number of conditions and similar types of conditions; there was not much variation. • The average number of probation conditions assigned to people on probation increases with risk, but only slightly. This increase ranged from less than one condition to one condition per increase in risk level. • People who received a PSI have on average approximately 5 more conditions assigned at each risk level when compared to people who did not receive a PSI. • A majority of the supervision conditions people were assigned did not target their criminogenic needs. Ø However, most people who had identified needs in the drugs and alcohol domain were assigned probation conditions that aligned with that need, though alignment was better when a PSI was conducted before sentencing Ø The majority of people who had identified needs in the family/marital, leisure and recreation, companions (criminal vs. anticriminal), and antisocial pattern were not assigned probation conditions that align with those needs. Ø When a PSI was not administered, the majority of people who had identified needs in pro-criminal attitudes and orientation were not assigned probation conditions that align with that need; when a PSI was administered, a more substantial proportion of individuals with this need were assigned such a condition. Ø When there is better alignment between needs and supervision conditions, it appears to be associated with the administration of a PSI, and to be driven by the assignment of conditions to address the domains for alcohol and drugs, education and employment, and pro-criminal attitude and orientation. • Improved alignment of supervision conditions with risk and needs did not significantly reduce the likelihood of reconviction one year out, however, more research is needed on measuring alignment since this non-significant finding might be due to the small variation in the number of conditions by risk level.

Minneapolis: Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice University of Minnesota Law School 2020. 36p.

Kelly Lyn Mitchel, Erin Harbinson and Julia Laskoruns

This report examines the role of prosecutors in the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office in influencing the contours of felony probation sentences. The main target of this study was to determine how prosecutors view and influence the length of probation, but the study also included an examination of the other key components of a felony probation sentence, namely the probation type (stay of imposition versus stay of execution) and conditions of probation, as well as the role of prosecutors in the probation violation process.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. 2020. 49p.

By Sino Esthappan and Janine Zweig

Probation plays a critical role in the juvenile justice (JJ) system, but the absence of clear intended outcomes for youth who are justice involved might contribute to the unnecessary use of judicial dispositions to probation and out-of-home placement, as well as to high rates of recidivism. In this brief, we describe findings from a developmental evaluation of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s (the Foundation’s) expansion of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative® to the deep end of the JJ system. Through its deep-end work, the Foundation aims to safely and significantly reduce the use of out-of-home placements for youth, especially youth of color. The findings in this brief build on those presented in Keeping Youth Out of the Deep End of the Juvenile Justice System: A Developmental Evaluation Overview of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Deep-End Reform, which provides an overview of the evaluation of the deepend reform and its findings (appendix A provides details on the methods used for the evaluation). Qualitative and quantitative data collection occurred between April 2014 and August 2018. In addition, the Foundation provided additional supports to two deepend sites—Lucas County, Ohio, and Pierce County, Washington—as part of their probation transformation focus (the Foundation details the rationale for this work in a 2018 report)

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2020. 11p.

By Madeline M. Carter, and The Honorable Richard J. Sankovitz

Isaac Newton was among the first modern scientists to recognize that new discoveries depend heavily on science that is already established: “If I have seen further,” he wrote, “it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”1 Giant strides have been made in the fields of public administration and criminal justice by applying science to practice. Evidence-based decision making asserts that public policy and practice should be informed by the best available research and enhanced through ongoing performance measurement and evaluation. Scientific study has demonstrated that recidivism can be reduced when three key principles are followed: n The risk principle suggests that justice system interventions should be matched to offenders’ risk level, focusing more intensive interventions on moderate and high risk offenders. n The need principle asserts that justice system interventions should target those factors that most significantly influence criminal behavior. n The responsivity principle demonstrates that interventions are most effective when they are based on research-supported models and tailored to the unique characteristics of individual offenders. In this paper, we propose to take this knowledge one step further: to link the duration of probation supervision to the optimal amount of intervention an offender needs in order to reduce risk of reoffense. The proposed “dosage” model of probation suggests that the length of supervision should be determined by the number of hours of intervention necessary to reduce risk, rather than an arbitrarily (or customarily) established amount of time (e.g., 3 years, 5 years). For many offenders, the research shows that correctional intervention is analogous to treating a patient: too little intervention and the patient receives little or no benefit; too much, and the treatment is ineffective or even harmful.2 Given this, we postulate that the length of supervision should depend on how long it takes an offender to achieve the dosage target—the type and amount of intervention that research tells us he or she needs in order to maximize the potential for behavior change and that is necessary in order to minimize risk to the public—rather than a fixed term of supervision.

Silver Spring, MD: Center For Effective Public Policy , 2014. 22p.

By Madeline Carter

In 2011, while working in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the Evidence-Based Decision Making Initiative, sponsored by the National Institute of Corrections (NIC), the Center for Effective Public Policy (the Center) pioneered the concept of “dosage probation.” In 2012, NIC awarded a cooperative agreement to the Center and its partner The Carey Group to develop a model that would further explore this concept and outline the activities, processes, and objectives that a jurisdiction would carry out at the individual case, agency, and system levels to implement dosage probation as a risk reduction intervention. The model was introduced through the publication of a monograph entitled Dosage Probation: Rethinking the Structure of Probation Sentences (Carter & Sankovitz, 2014). In subsequent years, NIC supported implementation of the model in two pilot sites: Napa County, California, and Washington County, Minnesota. Much has been learned from these pilot efforts.

The dosage probation model suggests that the length of supervision should be determined by the number of hours of intervention necessary to reduce risk as opposed to a standard probation term, such as 3, 4, 5, etc., years. Dosage probation is designed to incentivize behavior change by providing an opportunity for the individual under supervision to receive early termination from probation if they successfully engage in risk reduction interventions tailored to their criminogenic needs, in a “dose” matched to their risk level. This document, the second in a series, provides background information on the dosage probation project; a summary of the literature pertinent to dosage; and information about the dosage pilot sites, including key lessons that emerged from the pilot project. It also lays the foundation for a forthcoming set of resources on this topic: The Dosage Probation Toolkit.

Silver Spring, MD: Center for Effective Public Policy, 2020.