In David DeMatteo & Kyle C. Scherr (eds.). (2023). The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Law. New York: Oxford University. Ch. 22, p. 381.
Rather than a true alternative to incarceration, parole and probation supervision represents a prolonged form of punishment that promotes a revolving door due to technical violations and revocations. Technical violations are often seen as a proxy for a new crime (Campbell, 2016), meaning that people on supervision can be revoked and incarcerated for engaging in activity for which the non-supervised public cannot be sanctioned (Taxman, 2005). Probation and parole officers (POs) often respond to noncompliance issues and/or violations by subjecting individuals to increased scrutiny, thereby raising the likelihood that the officer will impose a sanction—often from revocation leading to incarceration (Lattimore et al., 2016)