New Reports from 10 Nationwide Sites Highlight Key Factors that Drive Probation Violations and Revocations and Guidance for Reform

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By Victoria Lawson, Research Project Director

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One in 55 people are under community supervision—probation and parole—nationwide. Across all state prisons, nearly 25% of prison admissions are the result of technical violations of community supervision—often due to minor offenses, such as such as missing appointments with supervision officers, missed curfews, or failed drug tests. The Council of State Governments Justice Center reports that approximately 95,000 people are incarcerated as a result of technical violations on any given day, which costs states $2.8 billion annually.

For the past two years, the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance (ISLG) and Arnold Ventures have been working with 10 jurisdictions across the country to research their probation supervision practices to preserve public safety without over-punishing less harmful behaviors with the ultimate goal of reducing unnecessary incarceration.

Today, those 10 jurisdictions have each released their action research reports, which identify the local practices and factors that lead to probation being revoked and how revocation can be prevented, with the goal of informing specific policy and practice interventions.

Key findings across the 10 sites

  • Technical acts of noncompliance with probation such as failed drug tests and missed appointments with probation officers account for a substantial proportion of violations filed, representing as many as two-thirds of filings in some jurisdictions.

  • Despite accounting for fewer violations, filings involving new crimes are more likely to result in revocation in most sites.

  • Risk is an important driver of both violations and revocations, both from the standpoint of assigned risk level and the perceived risk to public safety associated with particular acts of noncompliance.

With these findings in hand, the 10 sites are developing targeted practices and policies that aim to improve success on probation by addressing the key factors that have been found to drive probation violations and revocations.

This work is part of the Reducing Revocations Challenge, a national initiative dedicated to transforming probation supervision to improve outcomes and reduce unnecessary incarceration. The Challenge was launched in response to the growing recognition that revocations from supervision are a major contributor to mass incarceration, responsible for almost half of state prison admissions nationwide, and reform is urgently needed.

The 10 Reducing Revocations Challenge sites

The first phase of the Reducing Revocations Challenge supported action research in each of the 10 jurisdictions, which was conducted by a research organization and a local probation agency. This research team explored electronic data collected by the agencies, reviewed individual case files, and conducted stakeholder and client interviews to identify potential factors that drive revocations. This approach allowed them to deeply explore local policy and practice to understand the impact of a wide range of factors—such as supervision conditions and parameters, perceived risk, and the nature of the noncompliance—that affect who gets a probation violation or whose probation is revoked and why. The research team also explored characteristics of people who are more likely to be associated with violations and/or revocations, including gender, race, and ethnicity.

In the second phase of the Challenge, scheduled to begin later this year, a subset of the sites will receive additional funding to implement their solutions. In the coming months ISLG will also release a brief summarizing key themes and policy and practice implications from the research across sites.

“Probation revocations are a significant driver of mass incarceration,” said Jeremy Travis, executive vice president of criminal justice at Arnold Ventures. “Thanks to the Reducing Revocations Challenge, we are learning the most effective means of reducing probation failures and we are deepening our understanding by engaging directly with the people who are doing this work. We look forward to building upon the research-based findings from these sites and applying what they have learned to substantially reduce probation revocations across the country.”

“Given that a quarter of prison admissions are the result of technical violations of probation and parole—and we know that there is no relationship between the staggering numbers of technical violations and increased public safety—the Reducing Revocations Challenge and these 10 jurisdictions are taking important steps toward reducing mass incarceration,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of ISLG and former commissioner of the New York City Department of Probation. “Their leadership in transforming their own probation systems is also paving the way for other cities and localities across the country to do the same.”  

“One in 55 people are under community supervision—probation and parole—nationwide. We commend these sites for being trailblazers in making significant, data-informed reforms to their community supervision systems and making important inroads to dramatically reducing mass incarceration and improving public safety,” said Veronica Cunningham, executive director of the American Probation and Parole Association and former chief of Cook County Adult Probation and Director of Texas State Parole.

 “We applaud these 10 sites for critically examining their policies and practices and being willing to make tailored policy changes and adaptations based on that research to significantly improve probation and ultimately public safety,” said Ebony Ruhland, assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati and former research director at the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice.

For more information:

Steven Scarborough, Arnold Ventures, sscarborough@arnoldventures.org, 713-554-1943

Reagan Daly, ISLG, reagan.daly@islg.cuny.edu, 646-664-3493

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