Major community-supervision policy reforms in four states

An Assessment of Community Supervision Incarceration Responses in Nebraska and Utah

The Urban Institute and the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI) conducted an assessment of how states have implemented reforms to more effectively respond to violations of supervision. One such reform focuses on the use of incarceration stays that are shorter than full revocations of supervision would be, in response to violations of supervision to improve community corrections outcomes at the individual and system levels. These time-limited incarceration stays are sometimes referred to as custodial sanctions, jail stays, graduated incarceration responses, and caps of revocation time for first, second, or third violations. They can include short jail stays of one to three days in jail or prison stays of set periods ranging from 10, 15, 30, and up to 180 days. States that implement this policy aim to reduce the number of full revocations to prison and the amount of time people spend incarcerated compared with people who receive full revocation. To improve supervision outcomes, they also seek to improve people’s behavior on supervision by enacting these responses faster and with more certainty than longer revocation processes, aiming to then reduce new crimes committed during or after supervision.
Research shows that longer prison sentences do not produce better community safety outcomes (such as lower rates of reoffending) than shorter ones. Incarceration stays are expensive, and shorter sentences save resources that can be used on more effective approaches to improving community safety. Further, research indicates that the surety of a sanction occurring has more impact than how severe the sanction is. Moreover, research shows that incarceration has negative impacts on community safety. For instance, people on probation who had received an incarceration sanction had higher recidivism rates than people on probation who had received non-incarceration sanctions (The Pew Charitable Trusts 2019). Further, a meta-analysis of 116 studies showed that “custodial sanctions have no effect on reoffending or slightly increase it when compared with the effects of noncustodial sanctions such as probation (Petrich, Pratt, Jonson and Cullen 2021).”
States have implemented different strategies to limit the amount of time people spend incarcerated because of supervision violations. Typically, the use of incarceration as a response to a violation is part of a broader continuum, or matrix, of graduated responses used to address compliance and noncompliance with supervision terms. For instance, as part of its incentives and sanctions matrix, Nebraska implemented custodial sanctions as a response to probation violations. The most severe custodial sanction there is a jail stay of up to 30 days and the second most severe custodial sanction is a jail stay of up to 3 days; formal revocation is pursued only when someone has served 90 days of cumulative custodial sanctions. Moreover, Utah developed a system of graduated sanctions and incentives that includes tiered levels of incentives, and it established a policy whereby for probation violations, short jail stays are available along with capped terms of incarceration of up to 30 days for a first violation, 60 days for a second violation, and 90 days for a third violation. For people on parole in Utah, the matrix allows up to 60 days for a first violation, 120 days for a second violation, and 180 days for a third violation. Urban and CJI analyzed implementation and outcomes of both states’ policies.
This assessment explores three research questions in each state:
· How have the incarceration responses to violations been implemented as part of a broader supervision reform effort?
· What has changed during the implementation of incarceration responses for metrics such as supervision violations, revocation, successful completion, and recidivism?
· What are the observed associations between outcomes and receiving custodial sanctions?

An Assessment of Earned Discharge Community Supervision Policies in Oregon and Missouri

Oregon’s earned discharge program was originally designed to provide an incentive of 30 days off a supervision sentence for every 30 days of compliance. The supervising agencies found it difficult and cumbersome to calculate the credits, so in 2015, the policy was legislatively revised to provide for a review for discharge at the midpoint of every eligible case’s term. The ODOC tracks people’s supervision terms and notifies the relevant county when someone is nearing the midpoint of their term and is eligible for consideration for earned discharge. Eligibility remained the same: cases still had to serve at least 50 percent of the period of supervision, the time on supervision could not be less than six months, and people had to be on probation and local control post-prison supervision for a felony or designated drug-related misdemeanor. To be eligible, people must also have fully paid restitution and compensatory fines, they must not have been administratively sanctioned (not including interventions) or found in violation by the court in the six months before their review, and they must be actively participating in their supervision case plan.
The definition of compliance with case plan conditions, and therefore whether people can receive earned discharge, is discretionary and varies by county. The ODOC has encouraged counties to use internal policies to ensure consistency among offices within each county. Counties’ policies can define compliance with treatment conditions as being actively engaged in treatment or as having completed it, and policies can prescribe different circumstances in which sanctions can be used for people on supervision. This means that counties may respond to the same behavior differently, and therefore that they may approve earned discharge differently. In addition, some prosecutors and judges have required that cases be brought back before them before discharge. Although this is not legally required, some counties have reached agreements with prosecutors and judges to do so.
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In 2013, Missouri passed H. B. 1525 as part of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative. State leaders sought ways to cost-effectively improve supervision across the state. The bill created earned compliance credits for people on probation and parole, awarding eligible people 30 days off their supervision terms for every month of compliance with supervision conditions. In Missouri’s case, compliance means the absence of an initial violation report submitted by a probation or parole officer during a calendar month, or the absence of a motion to revoke to suspend supervision filed by a prosecutor. The MDOC Division of Probation and Parole oversees the supervision of everyone on felony probation and parole. Conditions for supervision are established by judges for people on felony probation and by the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole for people on parole.
Most people on felony supervision in Missouri are eligible to earn compliance credits, which are available to people convicted of a felony drug offense or a Class D or E felony.11 For certain otherwise eligible offenses, the sentencing court may make a finding that a person is ineligible for credits. Only when people have completed two years under supervision and paid restitution can they be discharged via earned credits. Eligible people can accrue credits after the first full calendar month of supervision. Anyone who began a term of probation or parole before September 1, 2012, could begin accruing credits on October 1, 2012.
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Missouri Department of Corrections (MDOC) staff we interviewed consider ECCs an effective incentive. Implementing the policy, however, has been difficult for them. Staff consider the criteria for eligibility and exclusions confusing and difficult to track. Moreover, these criteria have changed, exacerbating the confusion. In addition, the MDOC does not have a quality assurance system in place to ensure accuracy of ECC entries in its data management system. Incorrectly entered data can result in inaccurate supervision time calculations. In addition, MDOC staff expressed frustration that judges— who have discretion to disallow ECC discharges—apply the policy inconsistently. Further, effects of the policy have differed across counties, leading to varying views among supervision officers across the state as to whether ECC discharges have made caseloads more manageable. As caseloads decrease in one supervision district, probation officers are sometimes transferred to a different office where additional coverage is needed. This can cause caseloads to return to their previous level in offices from which probation officers are transferred.