Unfortunately, research about the best ways to use incentives in community supervision settings is limited—one of the publications most frequently cited in articles on probation incentives is more than 12 years old, and the data it uses is more than 20 years old. However, behavioral scientists have spent decades conducting experiments to determine what makes incentives—and consequences—most effective generally.
An effective incentive system will likely have the following attributes:
Value: Incentives should be highly valued by the people receiving them. Although people on probation typically find early discharge from supervision to be the most valuable incentive, the value of a particular incentive depends on individual factors, such as socioeconomic status or parenthood, and on whether a recipient deems an incentive proportionate to the triggering behavior.
Frequency: Research suggests that incentives should be delivered at least four times more often than punishments.
Swiftness: Criminal justice literature often underscores the fact that a punishment or incentive administered too long after the behavior it is intended to dissuade may not have the desired effect, because the person subject to the punishment or incentive may not connect the behavior to the consequence well enough for the punishment to have a lasting effect.
Consistency: As with swiftness, incentives offered too inconsistently may not have the desired effect of a person considering the experience of a positive reward the next time they must decide whether to engage in a desirable behavior. When recipients are certain that they will benefit from a behavior, it is more likely that they will sustain it.