From Supervision to Opportunity: Reimagining Probation and Parole

By Jasmin Sandelson

Criminal justice reform is now a high-profile, bipartisan issue in the United States. Politicians, activists, philanthropists, and celebrities all call for shrinking the system’s extensive reach. Yet as states work to cut the populations of their prisons and jails, one key aspect of the legal system often goes overlooked: community supervision.

Nationwide, one in fifty-five adults is under community supervision. 3.6 million people are on probation—supervision mandated after or instead of a prison sentence—and another 875,000 are on parole—supervision imposed on people who leave prison early to finish their sentence outside of the physical building.

For millions of people, the end of incarceration means the start of a new phase of intensive surveillance and control. Even after serving their time, people must manage a gauntlet of “stipulations:” rules limiting how, when, and where they spend their time. They must adhere to a rigorous routine of meetings and drug tests, obey curfews, pay fines and fees, and meet employment mandates. Breaking any of these rules can send people back to jail; 29 percent of state and federal prison admissions are not for new crimes, but rather for what are called “technical violations” of probation or parole.

This is not how community supervision was originally intended. Parole and probation were designed as alternatives to incarceration, aiming to promote rehabilitation and community reintegration. Yet as incarceration rates exploded beginning in the 1980’s, the work of probation and parole officers changed, too. Rather than offering support, officers now mostly monitor people’s compliance with the rules governing their release. 

As a result, our community supervision systems harm the very people they claim to help.   Let’s take employment as an example. Since stable work helps reduce recidivism rates, probation and parole officers historically helped connect people leaving incarceration with work opportunities. Now, however, officers often simply ensure people’s adherence to employment mandates: the obligation to have a job—any job—at all times. At the same time, people on probation must attend, on average, five different supervision-related appointments every month, which adds up to significant time away from work. Moreover, the mandate to quickly find work or risk being sent to jail can trap people in minimum wage jobs with few benefits and no security, jobs which do not help people rebuild their lives or support their families. Relatedly, employment mandates can stop people going to college and earning degrees that might elevate their long-term job prospects.

Probation and parole do not reduce crime, help people, or make communities safe. And, because the criminal justice system operates disproportionately in poor neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color, our current supervision systems further perpetuate racial and economic injustice.

What would better, safer, and fairer systems look like? Research is clear about the things that produce true community safety: access to education, stable jobs, housing security, and healthcare. Crime falls not when we increase punishment, surveillance, and control, but when we invest in flourishing communities, and give people the resources to meet their basic needs.

With this in mind, the research in our volume outlines key steps that could create a safer, more just future. It offers targeted recommendations to reform probation and parole—like limiting how long people can be under supervision, and restraining officers’ power to send people back to jail. Yet we also advocate for a more profound paradigm shift.

We need wholesale reforms to end systems that trap people in low-wage work and cycles of reincarceration. We need to redirect the extensive resources currently poured into surveillance and punishment to fund social support, economic justice, and community integration. By investing in education, training, employment, mental and physical healthcare, and affordable housing, we can help people avoid crime and rebuild their lives after incarceration. By replacing our focus on punishment with a focus on opportunity, we can not only help support the life-chances of people who have served their time. We can also help bring about racial and economic justice, and safety for all.

Article Details
From Supervision to Opportunity: Reimagining Probation and Parole
David J. Harding dharding@berkeley.edu, Bruce Western, and Jasmin A. Sandelson
First Published September 14, 2022
DOI: 10.1177/00027162221115486
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

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