Assessing the Effectiveness of Probation as a Community Sentence

• In Event: Evaluation of Probation Outcomes and Effectiveness

Abstract

Probation supervision represents the dominant form of correctional control in the United States. Intended originally as a rehabilitative intervention, it has also come to encompass strategies of surveillance and control that produce burdens on people experiencing it. While studies suggest probation's effects on recidivism are no worse, and sometimes better, than incarceration, these studies teach us little about how probation compares with less intrusive community sentences. This paper presents an analysis that seeks to fill this gap. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a nationally representative sample of 8,984 individuals born between 1980 and 1984, the analysis uses quasi-experimental methods to compare respondents convicted of crimes who received terms of probation with those sentenced to other community dispositions. Outcomes, in terms of self-reported offending and re-arrest, will be assessed.

Author

• Joel Miller, Rutgers University-Newark