Ch. 1 in Vincent Schiraldi. (2023). Mass Supervision: Probation, Parole, and the Illusion of Safety and Freedom. New York: New Press. 47–49.
This fad-chasing approach to reforming community supervision has repeated itself many times throughout the history of a field seeking to reconcile its lack of tangible outcomes with the legal system’s new punitiveness. Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) program provides a more recent case in point. HOPE was founded in 2004 on the notion that the criminal justice system gives people under supervision too many chances to mess up on probation, and then, finally, angrily slams them into prison. Hawaii First Circuit Court judge Steven Alm felt that the practice of waiting until there were numerous probation violations and meting out harsh punishments was farcical. Harkening back to the parens patriae (parent of the country) concept, Alm explained his thinking behind piloting HOPE, “I thought about how I was raised and how I raise my kids. Tell ‘em what the rules are and then if there’s misbehavior you give them a consequence immediately. That’s what good parenting is all about.”
This infantilizing sentiment was echoed by the American Probation and Parole Association when it advocated for swift and certain punishment. It argued that a person on probation “may be likened to a child knowing about his parents’ rules, knowing the consequences for breaking those rules prior to the occurrence of any infraction, and knowing that the consequences will for sure occur if the rules are broken.”
So, instead of giving numerous warnings to people he sentenced to probation in his court, Alm decided to punish people swiftly and certainly for all infractions, no matter how small, but with shorter trips to jail, a practice that was dubbed “swift, certain, and fair” punishment.
When researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial of Alm’s practices in Hawaii, they found that HOPE participants were 55 percent less likely to be arrested for a new crime, 72 percent less likely to use drugs, 61 percent less likely to miss appointments with their supervisory officers, and 53 percent less likely to have their probation revoked than those on regular probation. With outcomes like this, HOPE was copied 160 times over the next twelve years. Some states fell so in love with the promise of swift sanctions that they allowed probation or parole officers to incarcerate people under supervision without the need to go back in front of a judge to increase the “celerity,” or swiftness, and therefore, presumably, effectiveness of the sanction.
Through rigorous, randomized controlled trials funded by the U.S. Justice Department, six [sic] different sites attempted to see whether Alm’s successes in Hawaii were replicable or idiosyncratic. Under carefully controlled conditions and with the Justice Department, academic community, and community supervision world watching, none [sic] of these randomized trials showed statistically significant results. No one was able to replicate HOPE’s outcomes.
This hasn’t slowed HOPE’s supporters, however. As researchers Francis Cullen, Travis Pratt, and Jillian Turanovic wrote, “When negative evaluation findings occur, advocates of the intervention rarely admit failure and close up shop.” Indeed, in the face of this gold-standard research failure, Alm himself wrote in Criminology & Public Policy, “Done right, the HOPE strategy reduces victimization and crime, helps probationers and parolees to succeed on supervision and avoid going to prison, and saves taxpayers millions of dollars. What could be better than that?” Likewise, the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) continues to promote “Swift and Certain Sanctions Acts” for implementation at the state level on its website, modeled on the HOPE program. ALEC’s model bill advocates for allowing probation and parole staff to “administratively sanction” people on their caseloads for technical violations with five days of incarceration per violation, up to thirty days a year. Swift and certain sanctioning is one more example of practices—along with intensive supervision—that, despite failing to prove themselves in rigorous research, continue to flourish.