Transforming Justice | Parole and probation, once thought a solution to mass incarceration, increased drastically since the 1980s. A new movement seeks to make it more equitable.
Hope, racial equity and success are some of the values we want at the core of Oregon’s Community Corrections supervision program for the nearly 22,000 people under supervision in the community. However, these values are not part of the supervision experience for all people.
Does community supervision truly promote community safety and help people turn their lives around, or has the supervision system unintentionally created barriers for people trying to turn their lives around?
Community supervision is a process allowing for people involved with the criminal justice system to be safely supervised in their community instead of serving a sentence in prison. Community supervision was originally thought of as an effective alternative to incarceration. In an era where incarceration is the criminal justice system’s default punishment, having another tool to use — one that keeps families together in the community under specific conditions — was a strategy to decrease the prison population and invest in local, community-based solutions.
Both nationally and in Oregon, the increase in community supervision has been so great that many now refer to it as “mass supervision,” an extension of mass incarceration. Mass supervision feeds into mass incarceration because there are more ways to fail on supervision than to succeed.
While jail and prison populations significantly increased over the past four decades, the probation population skyrocketed. Millions more people are now on community supervision (parole and probation) than in jail and prison, as Sentencing Project data shows.
While Oregon has taken intentional steps to reduce the number of people on supervision (reducing the population from 36,000 in 2016 to 21,000 today), approximately 25% of new intakes into jails and prisons are because a person has broken a probation rule and not because they committed a new crime, according to a 2023 Prison Policy Initiative study.
Community supervision rules and requirements can be restrictive and overwhelming, with more rules than people on supervision can reasonably remember or follow, including who they can associate with, where they can work and where they can live. The various restrictions act as tripwires, obstacles and traps — a “prison without walls” that often lands someone back into a prison with walls.
People on supervision need to routinely see their probation officer at their probation office, most likely during their work hours, which puts people at risk of missing a shift or losing their job entirely. Some probation officers will show up at someone’s workplace or home, stigmatizing them in front of coworkers and neighbors. That’s in addition to attending court-ordered treatment meetings, a standard condition of probation, often whether they need treatment or not. A mistake or violation in any of these areas can lead to, you guessed it … jail or prison. This is a common example of what the alternative to incarceration and, thus, “freedom” looks like.
Further contributing to this culture of mass supervision is the historical relationship between probation officers and people on probation, especially for communities of color. Communities have the experience of probation officers being more like police officers or law enforcement.
Fortunately, a shift in the culture of supervision is beginning to happen across the United States and Oregon. There has been a reckoning: communities and public safety stakeholders are beginning to see that we can have just, equitable and effective outcomes with a process designed to help people succeed instead of fail. Probation officers are increasingly prioritizing progress over punishment by focusing efforts on how they can help someone get back on their feet by giving feedback that helps people meet their goals and by making adjustments to supervision conditions along the way.
Partnership for Safety and Justice and the Transforming Justice Coalition are driving the change locally, creating a policy and cultural pivot that has shifted conditions of probation to become more individualized and human-centered. People working in community corrections who want to improve outcomes for the people they serve also support the effort.
Advocates for justice reform and people with supervision experience drafted a law the Oregon Legislature passed this session with bipartisan support. Oregon Senate Bill 581, championed by Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene and Springfield, allows people convicted of certain crimes to have their supervision end early, provided they are meeting their supervision goals and served half of their sentence. The policy goes into effect Jan. 1, 2024, making over 4,000 people eligible to successfully complete their supervision early, directly impacting over 20% of Oregon’s supervision population.
Over the next few months, it will be critical to educate and empower the over 4,000 people who will be eligible for supervision review about the requirements that will lead to the successful early termination of their probation to maximize the effective implementation of Senate Bill 581 in Oregon. A collaborative effort between advocates, the Oregon Department of Corrections, probation officers and reentry programs across the state is underway to do this work.
By providing opportunities for people to successfully complete their supervision sentences and live productive, crime-free lives, there will be a pivot in our supervision culture that brings hope, racial equity and greater overall success for people on supervision. When people thrive, we have fewer people on supervision, fewer people incarcerated, and more people contributing to the health and safety of our communities.
Babak Zolfaghari-Azar is senior policy manager at Partnership for Safety and Justice, a statewide nonprofit advocating for equity, accountability and healing in the public safety and criminal justice systems. He has been engaged in criminal justice policy work and has served justice-involved youth and families for over a decade.
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