PROBATION AND PAROLE - PUBLIC RISK AND THE FUTURE OF INCARCERATION ALTERNATIVES

Jail and prison populations in the United States have continued to grow unabated during the past two decades but crime rates have not declined Partly in response to the pressures caused by burgeoning correctional populations, the use of alternatives to incarceration has expanded An ongoing debate centers on the effectiveness of these alternatives. Many criminal justice professionals and some researchers question whether such alternatives seriously restrict the criminal justice system's ability to incapacitate the active offender. This study deals specifically with two alternatives to incarceration: probation and parole. We examine offender recidivism for a sample of probationers and parolees active in New Orleans, Louisiana, and offer a new approach to addressing the effectiveness issue. Past research has evaluated the effectiveness of alternatives by examining failure rates of diverted offenders. High failure rates, we argue, do not necessarily imply a significant loss of the incapacitative effects of imprisonment. We suggest that a more appropriate measure of the loss of incapacitative effect is the proportion of all offenses committed by persons on probation or parole. Our results suggest that such losses are surprisingly low. The policy implications of our findings are discussed.