WASHINGTON — Probation and parole are often described as alternatives to incarceration, but a recent Prison Policy Initiative briefing argues that community supervision remains one of the largest and most far-reaching forms of correctional control in the United States.
Jacob Kang-Brown writes that “community supervision represents the largest segment of the criminal legal system” and explains that it is “almost entirely a state- and locally-run enterprise.” The briefing states that “around 3.5 million people are on probation or parole compared to 2 million people who are incarcerated.”
The report explains that “more people are on parole than are in local jails nationwide.” It also states that “people on probation make up more than half of all people under correctional control of any kind.”
Although probation and parole occur outside prison walls, the briefing says that “around two-thirds of all people under correctional control are on probation or parole.” This shows that community supervision is not separate from the criminal legal system but is instead a major part of it.
The report also states that community supervision has declined. According to the briefing, “between 2009 and 2024, the overall rate of people on community supervision across the United States fell by 31%.”
The briefing shows that “41 states and the District of Columbia have substantially reduced community supervision rates over the past 15 years.” Still, lower numbers do not automatically mean the system has become fairer.
Kang-Brown writes that “changes in probation and parole populations are not inherently good or bad; they can result from a wide range of reforms across the criminal legal system.” For example, “more people on parole might mean that states are moving more people out of prisons.”
At the same time, the report explains that “declining community supervision could reflect new policies lowering barriers to successfully completing a supervision term.” The report also argues that “probation is overused for lower-level offenses.”
The briefing states that “as a true ‘alternative’ to prison or pretrial detention, parole or probation can be an improvement over the status quo.” However, it also warns that “community supervision tends to be poorly designed” for connecting people to “the services and treatment they need to achieve stability.”
One of the clearest problems is the number of rules people must follow. The briefing states that “both probation and parole impose an excessive number of conditions on people that can be nearly impossible to comply with all the time.”
For people dealing with poverty, housing instability, transportation problems or health issues, these requirements can make success difficult.
The most serious consequence is reincarceration. According to the briefing, “when someone on supervision is accused of violating a condition—particularly through behaviors that are not crimes—they are often incarcerated as a response.”
This means that a person may be sent to jail or prison without being accused of a new crime. Instead of creating stability, the report says this response “only further destabilizes their lives.”
The briefing also shows that completing supervision is not guaranteed. It states that “only about 36% of people successfully completed a term of probation and 62% completed parole, in 2024.”
Those numbers suggest that probation and parole can set many people up to fail. When supervision includes many conditions but not enough support, it can become another pathway back into incarceration.
The briefing concludes that correctional control in the United States operates “at an enormous scale.” It also warns that the system too often shuffles people “back and forth between detention, incarceration and supervision.”
Overall, the report shows that probation and parole are not always synonymous with freedom. They may keep people in their communities, but they can still restrict daily life and lead to incarceration for violations that are not new crimes.
If community supervision is meant to be an alternative to incarceration, it should reduce unnecessary punishment and help people achieve stability. Without those changes, probation and parole will continue to carry a hidden weight for millions of people.
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