"Pathways to Success on Probation: Lessons Learned from the First Phase of the Reducing Revocations Challenge"
The title of this post is the title of this interesting new research brief from Arnold Ventures and the CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance which is part of the Reducing Revocations Challenge, a national initiative on probation supervision seeking to reduce its impact on mass incarceration. Here is part of the research brief's introduction:
There has been growing agreement among practitioners, policymakers, and the general public that there are far too many people under probation supervision in the United States. Since 1980, the number of people on probation has increased more than 215 percent, from 1.2 million to 3.5 million in 2018. Today, approximately one in 57 adults (roughly two percent of the U.S. adult population) is under community supervision on any given day, and unnecessarily long probation terms are required by law in many states around the country. Indeed, together with parole, probation supervision accounts for the large majority of individuals under correctional control in this country....
Probation was designed to be an alternative to incarceration, yet for many people under supervision it turns out to be a pathway that inevitably leads them there. Although research has highlighted a range of evidence-based strategies over the years, from graduated responses to risk-needs-responsivity supervision models to reporting kiosks for low-risk individuals, success rates have not improved over time. We still know very little about how to most effectively manage and support people on probation in a manner that reduces revocations, maximizes success, and works to achieve community safety and well-being. This is in part because our understanding about the factors, circumstances, and behaviors that drive probation revocations to jail or prison — including the role of technical violations and new criminal activity and what is considered in decisions to violate and/or revoke — remains limited. We also know very little about how to respond to people on probation in ways that prevent new criminal activity without over-punishing less harmful behaviors or exacerbating racial and ethnic disparities....
With this in mind, in 2019 the CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance (ISLG) launched the Reducing Revocations Challenge (Challenge), a national initiative that aims to increase the success of those on probation by identifying, piloting, and testing promising strategies grounded in a robust analysis and understanding of why revocations occur. With the support of Arnold Ventures, over the past two years, the Challenge has supported research in 10 jurisdictions around the country to explore three key questions about local probation practices:
This brief summarizes the findings from the research work across jurisdictions. It begins with an overview of the Challenge and participating sites. From there, we present key themes that emerged from the research in two subsections. The first discusses trends that reaffirm prior learnings or assumptions about supervision revocations, especially with respect to factors and circumstances that influence who has probation violations filed and/or is revoked. The second highlights new insights that emerged in key areas that have been more difficult to explore in the past despite being critical for enhancing success on supervision. The brief ends with a discussion of policy and practice implications.
- Who is most likely to have a violation of their probation filed or have their probation revoked?
- Which types of noncompliance most often lead to probation revocation?
- What factors are driving these outcomes and what are the potential solutions? In each jurisdiction, the work was carried out by an action research team composed of a probation agency and a local research partner.
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