In a state where early voting has already begun and where, in 2018, the House of Delegates majority was decided by pulling a name from a hat after a tied election, this purge has caused understandable alarm among voting rights groups.
But the negative effects of supervised parole and probation extend far beyond voting.
That the Virginia State Police misclassified technical violations — such as staying out past curfew or missing appointments with probation officers — as new felonies should surprise no one. That’s because, for the more than 63,000 Virginians on probation and parole, a technical violation can have the same effect as a new conviction, sending them to prison not for reoffending but for violating rules that have no discernible effect on either public safety or rehabilitation.
There are nearly 4 million people in the United States on parole and probation — about twice as many as are incarcerated in our prisons and jails. These individuals are not quite free in the way that the rest of us take for granted. Their homes can be searched without a warrant; they can be incarcerated without representation and held without bail; they do not have the right to remain silent; and they can be convicted of, and imprisoned for, noncriminal acts based on evidence that does not need to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Probation (a front-end sentence intended as an alternative to incarceration) and parole (early release from prison for good behavior) have been around since the 1800s. Both originated as alternatives to what was a new but increasingly brutal penitentiary system and were intended to rehabilitate people in the community. They are unsuccessful on both counts.
In the 1970s, rehabilitation became a dirty word in criminal justice, and the system took a sharply punitive turn, setting the country on a march toward mass incarceration and mass supervision. Probation and parole pivoted to a “trail ’em, nail ’em, and jail ’em” approach. This ushered in a mushrooming of hard-to-meet supervision conditions and imprisonment for noncriminal supervision violations. From 1980 to 2008, there was a fivefold increase in the number of people under community supervision — topping 5 million at the peak — alongside a similar expansion in prison populations. Nearly 1 in 4 people entering state prisons are incarcerated for a technical violation of their supervision, not a new offense, costing taxpayers $2.8 billion annually.
In 2017, musician and activist Meek Mill was sentenced to two to four years in prison after popping a wheelie on a dirt bike and getting into an altercation with a paparazzo (both charges were dismissed) after spending eight crime-free years on probation for gun and drug charges. In 2020, Michael Tyson became the first New York City inmate to die of covid-19; he was being held after missing appointments with his parole officer. And in 2012, Thomas Barrett, on probation for swiping a $2 can of beer, was jailed for a year after he couldn’t pay his private probation fees, even though he was selling his blood plasma to make the payments.
It would be one thing if all this surveillance were keeping us safer, but the data belies that conclusion. My colleagues and I analyzed nearly 40 years of data from all 50 states and discovered that “mass supervision” has failed to achieve its two primary goals: reducing incarceration and improving public safety. In fact, we found that these practices increase incarceration with so many imprisoned for technical violations and that states with more parolees actually had more, not less, crime.
Supervision’s hammer also lands most heavily on young Black men. At the peak, 1 in 12 Black men were on probation or parole, with rates even higher for those without high school diplomas. These young men are more likely to be imprisoned for technical violations because of bias, because they often live in heavily policed neighborhoods andbecause it is harder to navigate the maze of supervision conditions if one is unemployed, unstably housed or lacks reliable transportation.
Mass supervision has managed to make us less free and no safer, all at great cost. As policymakers look to reform their supervision systems, they should consider reducing — or, for some groups, eliminating — probation and parole supervision, replacing them with services offered by nonprofit and volunteer groups, and carefully studying the outcomes.
A number of states have downsized supervision, saved money and improved public safety. In Missouri, policymakers reduced probation terms by 30 days for every 30 days of compliance while under supervision. In the first three years, 36,000 people were able to reduce their terms by 14 months, the number under supervision dropped by 18 percent, and reconviction rates for those released early were the same as for those discharged from supervision before the policy went into effect. If less supervision has better outcomes at lower cost, it’s plausible that no supervision — and investing the resulting savings in community supports such as housing, employment, and drug and mental health services — might yield even better ones.
After nearly two centuries, probation and parole have failed to prove their worth. Let’s carefully experiment with, and assiduously study, the alternatives instead.
