I will never forget my first discussion with my parole agent.
I had just been released after serving three years of my sentence. I had regularly seen terrible things in both jails and prison but had never felt as little hope as I did after that initial parole discussion (not when I was arrested, not after sentencing, and not while I was incarcerated).
Despite living through this often traumatic and deeply disturbing and dehumanizing period of incarceration, I remember telling my Mom on the phone:
“Mom, I just don’t know if I can make it through this.”
What should have felt like the happiest day that I had experienced in three years ended up instead with me feeling nothing but utterly hopeless.
I was told (in no uncertain terms) how worthless and subhuman I was, I was handed a list of over 20 prohibitions (many of which seemed at best counterproductive), and I was told in no uncertain terms that it would be a miracle if I didn’t find myself back in prison within a few weeks.
This didn’t entirely come as a surprise, parole and probation officers are trained to scare the holy hell out of newly released prisoners ostensibly because they think if we are “scared straight” we won’t take parole and probation for granted.
I had been warned in advance that this was going to happen and despite knowing what was coming, it still almost reduced me to utter hopelessness and this happens all over the country every day. According to the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management in 2016:
“Today, the U.S. incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world. In addition to the 2.3 million people incarcerated in our nation’s jails and prisons, 4 million individuals are on probation or parole at any given time.”
In other words, the largest “criminal population” in the United States is currently the one living on parole and probation and, in many ways, parole and probation is often the hardest time we formerly incarcerated people endure.
Trail Em’, Nail Em’, and Jail Em’
I remember parole and probation officers tossing my entire room after another parolee was arrested across the hall in my boarding house (someone I barely talked to).
They showed no more care than CO’s showed towards my property in prison and they made it very clear that I had no property rights and deserved little in the way of being treated with dignity despite having literally nothing to do with the parole violation which happened across the hall.
After they were finished trashing my room (and after they found nothing incriminating) they decided to take my phone because it had browser capacity (even though I had never used the browser and the phone had been approved by my agent).
Despite doing nothing wrong and later technical reports proving that I had never used the browser capability on the phone in any inappropriate way, I was forced to purchase a new phone without browser capacity (nearly impossible to find) at my own expense (I had to just eat the cost of the original approved phone and contract).
For the first year of my parole, I was not allowed out of my house except during the hours between 8 am and 1:30 pm. I was not allowed out of my house at all on weekends (unless I was working). I would often be sitting at the bookstore reading or shopping in the grocery store only to be surprised by my parole agent (I was on a GPS monitor at the time).
I remember, in particular, being called by my parole officer multiple times and being yelled at for not being at home while I was on my parole mandated therapy. I would remind her that I was at the therapy she had insisted upon and scheduled for me, strangely enough, I never once heard an apology.
Many of you reading are likely thinking something like this:
“Who cares what happens to inmates as long as it keeps our communities safe?”
But that is exactly the problem, there is no evidence suggesting that these practices keep anyone safer. In fact, our current system manufactures probation and parole failure and not safety:
“Nationally, about 60 percent of those who exit probation complete it successfully. The 40 percent who fail are made up of those whose probation is revoked for either a technical violation of probation, the commission of a new crime, or absconding (Glaze, Bonczar, and Zhang, 2010; Kaeble, Maruschak, and Bonczar, 2015); the majority are composed of technical violations and/or the commission of new crimes (Austin, 2010; Burke, Gelb, and Horowitz, 2007). According to the Pew Center on the States, along with the large growth in the number of people on probation, the number of people on probation who are revoked and sent to jail (or prison) increased by 50 percent (220,000 to 330,000) from 1990 to 2004 (Burke, Gelb, and Horowitz, 2007). Such numbers show that probation is not simply an alternative to incarceration but a key driver of incarceration in the United States.”
How much would you be thinking about safety if you were constantly living in terror, with little expectation of safety, and the constant threat of being accused of violations you often don’t fully understand?
Making people feel chronically insecure is, not surprisingly, not a great way to ensure that they reintegrate in ways that promote the most societal safety.
Despite this, parole and probation offices have judged their success on outcomes of monitoring, of surveillance, and on the application of external controls to recently released inmates (including the liberal use of terror and police powers).
I know one agent, for instance, who liked to brag that less than five people have ever graduated from his caseload (He is a former Correctional Officer who believes that nobody who has been to prison deserves grace or consideration and that his purpose in life is to make sure that all “inmates” get sent back to prison).
The end result has been a total disaster, as the Consensus Document of the Executive Session on Community Corrections from the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School strongly concluded recently:
“Trail ‘em, nail ‘em, and jail ‘em” destabilizes communities, undermines the legitimacy of correctional agencies, erodes trust between communities and authorities, and increases recidivism among those under supervision. We call instead for a system of community corrections that promotes an individual’s chances of success. All people under community supervision should be viewed as having the potential to succeed. In many cases, they face an array of factors that limit their prospects, and these factors can only be overcome with significant support.”
Significant support is not exactly what the system, as currently constructed, generates for most of the people on parole and probation. I remember asking, for instance, to be allowed to attend 12-step support group meetings and was denied for months at a time. I remember being denied the opportunity to even talk to a long-time mentor who had been successful in life upon release (and to whom my therapist had introduced me to before I was sentenced) because there was a prohibition against me having any contact with other formerly incarcerated people.
If you set out to design a system to increase all of the most likely triggers for bad behavior (alienation, shame, loneliness, and disconnection) it would likely be identical to our current dominant system of parole and probation.
Criminal Justice Debt and Parole and Probation
The cost of my GPS monitoring device, which was a condition of my parole and something I was forced to wear for two years, was higher than the cost of my rent.
At the time of my most serious economic vulnerability, when I didn’t have any savings or a job, I was being forced to wear a device that cost me well over $100 a week to wear. And, I was forced to wear it even though it’s primary purpose since it was a passive system, was to make society feel “safe” about my release.
In other words, I was put in debt for over $6,000 to provide society a placebo.
<When I say that it was a passive system, what I mean is that if I were allowed out of the house during my scheduled hours, nobody was mandated to be monitoring my location and if I had, for some crazy reason, decided to commit a new crime, I could have just cut the device off and it would not help anyone know where I committed the crime or where I could be found.>
And that was only one part of the debt that was piled on me upon release.
I was charged for every day I was housed in jail prior to prison. I was told that if I did not pay my court fees (which were well over $1,000) and my supervision fees my parole would be rescinded and many people also have to pay victim’s fees or risk parole suspension.
It is hard to imagine more regressive and counterproductive taxation then creating the duty for formerly incarcerated people to carry the costs of their own incarceration (or supervision), economic insecurity is one of the greatest causes of recidivism and people who have just been released from prison have no resources
As the Brennan Center put it:
“What at first glance appears to be easy money for the state can carry significant hidden costs – both human and financial – for individuals, for the government, and for the community at large. When persons with convictions are unable to pay their debts, they face a cascade of consequences. Late fees, interest, and other “poverty penalties” accrue. In many states, driver’s licenses are suspended for missed payments, thereby stripping individuals of a legal means of traveling to work. Damaged credit can make it difficult to find employment or housing. Worse yet, in many ways, when states impose debt that cannot be paid they are charting a path back to prison. Debt-related mandatory court appearances and probation and parole conditions leave debtors vulnerable to violations that result in a new form of debtors’ prison. Suspended driver’s licenses lead to criminal sanctions if debtors continue to drive. Aggressive collection tactics can disrupt employment, make it difficult to meet other obligations such as child support, and lead to financial insecurity – all of which can lead to recidivism...and very little opportunity or access to money.”
And this problem extends to parole and probation departments, despite the massive numbers of people that community corrections are expected to supervise they are often among the most poorly funded agencies in the entire criminal justice system:
“According to the Pew Center for the States (2009), the average cost per day for a person under probation supervision is $3.42, compared to $79 a day for a person in prison. Putting aside that disparity, it is illustrative to focus on the $3.42 a day, or $1,250 a year. For a population that is overwhelmingly poor, with high levels of substance abuse, low levels of employment, and —especially in urban areas — chronic homelessness, $1,250 a year is next to nothing. This is especially true considering that most of that money is spent on probation officer salaries, with very little funding left to deal directly with any of those deep-seated problems. In fact, so many probation agencies are so poorly funded that they often resort to the imposition of fees, paid by the person on probation, to fund the basic costs of probation, which include drug testing, monthly programming fees, and court costs.”
I know that faced with these realities, I started feeling (and still often feel) totally helpless and hopeless. And I had the benefits of a good education, a supportive family, my whiteness, and a great employment history.
No matter what your background, for all formerly incarcerated people It is very hard to procure housing, almost impossible to find a job, and even harder to imagine a world in which you can go back to feeling like an even semi-normal human being much less someone restored to citizenship. It should come as no surprise that this hopelessness can often turn into recidivism:
“Fines and fees create large financial and human costs, all of which are disproportionately borne by the poor. High fines and fee payments may force the indigent formerly incarcerated to make difficult trade-offs between paying court debt and other necessary purchases. Unsustainable debt coupled with the threat of incarceration may even encourage some formerly incarcerated individuals to return to criminal activity to pay off their debts, perversely increasing recidivism. Time spent in pretrial detention as a punishment for failure to pay debts entails large costs in the form of personal freedom and sacrificed income, as well as increasing the likelihood of job loss.”
And if these fines and fees aren’t enough to create hopelessness, virtually every time I visited my parole office I was treated to waiting for hours as at least one person during nearly every visit was “violated” and sent back to prison. Extensive research has shown that this “revolving door” is created almost entirely by community corrections working from the “technical violations” playbook.
It is also important to remember that many of these fines and fees fall disproportionately on communities of color and in poor communities. It is impossible to spend any time in America’s jails and prisons without immediately noticing that people of color are disproportionately represented and impacted.
But what can we do to fix this revolving door and return some sense of sanity to our parole and probation system?
The Solutions
Only through the grace of God and an incredible attention to detail was I able to complete my own period of parole and probation (which lasted 2.5 years).
I felt every day that my parole officer cared more about punishing me than they did about helping me reintegrate safely into society and I have seen parole agents actively work against reintegration first hand (I had a friend whose parole agent ruin his ability to move in at his mother’s condominium after he chose to call the condo’s board to inform them that a felon would be moving in, they immediately changed their rules to exclude felons).
There really is no mystery about how to fix parole and probation, as usual, the question is one about finding the political will to act.
Pretty much all experts seem to agree on one point, the most important thing we can do to fix parole and probation is to start treating recently released formerly incarcerated people as human beings worthy of dignity and respect and with the potential to change.
“Common humanity and respect must be the starting point for any successful corrections model. This mutual respect is the foundation for the wellness of officers...Faith in people’s ability to change is foundational to what we do, and much of our program support is designed to facilitate changed behavior in the individuals under supervision...Recognizing that we all make mistakes yet are capable of change for the better would give rise to incentives that are (1) clear and predictable and (2) graduated and fairly calibrated to the behaviors we wish to encourage and those we wish to discourage. Communicated clearly and acted upon with certainty, a fair and certain incentive structure ties an individual’s progress through community corrections to their personal choices. Moreover, graduating rewards and sanctions to reflect the magnitude of one’s progress ensures that we do not over-reward or over-penalize and, in the process, short-circuit one’s rehabilitation.”
In other words, people who have been released need to become invested in finding solutions with the cooperation (instead of antagonism) of a willing and helpful partner from parole and probation. The biggest hurdle in successful reintegration is figuring out how to help people see a vision for the person they can become after they are released from prison (a vision that is hard to demonstrate when everything about parole and probation seems hostile, counterintuitive, and counterproductive).
We need to create a system which helps recently incarcerated people see the road to restoration and freedom and also, at the same time, see a meaningful future as a productive and meaningful member of their communities. Why would anyone willingly participate in a community or system that considers them a permanent pariah incapable of restoration?
Another part of the problem is the one-size-fits-all top-down model where community corrections officers and offices are judged on anything but success-based metrics. We need to insist that parole and probation success is judged by outcomes (like reducing recidivism and ensuring housing, employment, and programming success).
A parole or probation officer should be seen as successful once a formerly incarcerated person has completed the recommended programming, been integrated with all necessary social services (from food stamps to health care), found meaningful employment opportunities, and procured a sustainable place to live.
So, incentive and reward structures should be built around parole outcomes instead of successful surveillance and monitoring. Why would we ever build a system where rewards and incentives are entirely disconnected from successful results? Would you pay your company CFO higher wages for having clean windows in her office or because they were increasing the profitability of the company?
Given the resource-constrained world most community corrections offices operate in we also need to focus the most resources on the highest risk people on each parole and probation officers caseloads and at the time they are at most risk of offending.
This might sound like a radical proposal but it was tried on a pretty wide scale in New York, and the results were pretty spectacular:
“On a macro-level, several large-scale changes happened over two decades in the New York City Department of Probation. First, the number of individuals on probation decreased dramatically since the mid-1990s (by about two-thirds) and simultaneously there were large declines in the use of jail and prison and in the city’s crime rate. Second, among those on supervision, all individuals assessed as low-risk were moved to electronic kiosk reporting — effectively ending traditional face-to-face supervision for this group — and there was a successful push to recommend early discharge for those on probation who had met the department’s criteria for successful compliance for at least 18 months. Third, and most recently, persons placed on probation in New York City began receiving probation sentences lower than the maximum at rates several times higher than persons sentenced to probation in the rest of the state. Fourth, the violation rate for those on probation in the city fell to 3.1 percent, a fraction of the state average. Finally, probation resources that became available because of the use of kiosks, early discharge, and shorter probation terms were diverted to supervising and providing supports for higher risk individuals.”
Parole and probation terms should be frontloaded with programming and expectations combined with the promise of rewards like reductions in requirements or earned release from parole and probation when expectations are met or exceeded so that limited resources can always be deployed in the time, place, and manner in which they will be the most successful.
We also need to stop trying to pass the costs of our criminal justice system on to the people least likely or able to pay and we need to insist that parole and probation agents are required to engage in evidence-based continuing education based on best practices. It would also be incredibly important for all community corrections personnel to take advanced mental health training as part of their continuing education requirements. Finally, we need to use the best possible risk assessments and reduce the length of parole and probation terms based on the best available evidence.
So now that we know how parole and probation should be reformed, how do we start to marshall the political will necessary to change community corrections offices all over the country?
One way is to join with my brother in incarceration Shaka Senghor and with the organization #Cut50 in trying to reform parole and probation. You can add your voice, participate and share on social media, and join Cut 50 and become an advocate for change. The name of the campaign is #StillNotFree (I am an active participant myself).
Another way is to join your area criminal justice reform organizations. Criminal justice reform is one of the few areas where bipartisanship has become commonplace and organizations across the political spectrum work together to create meaningful and lasting change. I personally am a member of a ton of reform organizations in Michigan (from Nation Outside to the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency).
Finally, and most important, become educated and vote. Ask representatives running for office about their position on parole and probation reform and on ending mass incarceration. We need to wake up to the fact that most “tough on crime” solutions have rarely made our communities safer, helped returning citizens reintegrate, or resulted in better economic outcomes for our country. It is time to replace “tough on crime” with “smart on crime” and reforming parole and probation will be central to the success of that effort.
I hope you will join with me in trying to ensure better parole and probation outcomes all over the United States. In order to be successful, we have to educate ourselves so that we can critically question the dominant narratives about crime and punishment.
To that end, here is the list of the works cited in this article:
Bannon, Nagrecha, and Diller. Criminal Justice Debt, A Barrier to Reentry. Brennan Center for Justice, 2010.
Executive Session on Community Corrections. Toward an Approach to Community Corrections for the 21st Century: Consensus Document of the Executive Session on Community Corrections. Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School, 2017.
FINES, FEES, AND BAIL PAYMENTS IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM THAT DISPROPORTIONATELY IMPACT THE POOR, Council Of Economic Advisers Issue Brief December 2015
Harding, Morenoff, Nguyen, Bushway. Short-and long-term effects of imprisonment on future felony convictions and prison admissions. PNAS vol. 114 no. 42, 2017.
Jacobson, Michael P., Vincent Schiraldi, Reagan Daly, and Emily Hotez. Less Is More: How Reducing Probation Populations Can Improve Outcomes. Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School, 2017.
Still, Wendy, Barbara Broderick, and Steven Raphael. Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections. New Thinking in Community Corrections Bulletin. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 2016. NCJ 249946.
Solomon et al. Putting Public Safety First: 13 Parole Supervision Strategies to Enhance Reentry Outcomes. 2008. The Urban Institute.
Josh is a blogger and freelance writer. Please consider following him on Twitter, throwing a tip into his hat on Patreon, or adding his blog OnPirateSatellite to your feeds.