Advancing sensible justice in Tennessee

A significant percentage of Tennessee’s inmate population includes those whose supervision (parole, probation, or community supervision) was revoked due to a failed drug test or a technical violation. A technical violation could be a failure to attend a meeting with the supervising official, attend a treatment program, or violating curfew. Incarcerating these low level violators creates significant costs to taxpayers, without yielding any public safety benefits.
There are alternatives to revocation that have proven to balance the overall costs with the public safety risk, rehabilitation needs, and the interest of justice at the local level. States should partner with local governments to create incentives for the implementation of these alternatives by local probation officials. The state can allocate grant funds for counties that successfully implement a probation model that reduces the number of probation revocations. This would work as an added incentive for county probations services to implement proven approaches for safely supervising nonviolent probationers in the community, while reduction the rate of probation violations.
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Savings come in the form of not only reducing reincarceration, but also lowering the rate at which probationers commit new offenses and increasing the share of their probationers who are current on their victim restitution payments. The portion of the projected savings tied to the initial commitment reduction would be distributed upfront, while the performance-based portion would be distributed at the end of each fiscal year. The rationale for the upfront portion is that counties need these resources to put in place the initial strategies. For Tennessee, these strategies can include local adoption of the graduated sanction model created by the Public Safety Act of 2016. Graduated sanctions are swift and certain penalties for minor probation violations, and function as an alternative to revocation and incarceration.