The Effects of Sanction Intensity on Criminal Conduct - JDAI Helpdesk

What Works in Probation Supervision?
Despite being one <strong>of</strong> the most widely-used criminal sanctions in the U.S.A., with
one in forty-five adults on probation or parole (Glaze & Bonczar, 2009), much <strong>of</strong> the
research on probation has failed to shed light on the characteristics <strong>of</strong> effective
supervision practice. Correctional research has mainly focused on programming and
treatments provided in addition to criminal justice sanctions like probation orders. In
many probation agencies, standard practice is driven by resource constraints more than
evidence-based strategies. With caseloads <strong>of</strong>ten averaging 150 to 200 <strong>of</strong>fenders per
probation <strong>of</strong>ficer in a given agency, supervision levels vary from weekly or twice-weekly
meetings for the highest-risk or delinquent probationers to telephone reporting for those
towards the end <strong>of</strong> their sentences. Some probationers simply mail in a card to confirm
their current address (Petersilia & Turner, 1993).
Over the last thirty years, the use <strong>of</strong> probation has grown in response to (and as a
result <strong>of</strong>) increasing prison populations. In this climate, intensive supervision probation
(ISP) emerged as a supervision strategy that was deemed punitive enough to be used with
<strong>of</strong>fenders who would otherwise have been incarcerated, yet cheaper than the cost <strong>of</strong>
keeping someone in prison. While few ISP programs are exactly alike, they usually
involve a reduction in caseload size and increased frequency <strong>of</strong> contact with the
probation <strong>of</strong>ficer, increased drug testing requirements and service provision or brokerage.
<strong>The</strong> first wave <strong>of</strong> research in the 1960s was generally described as the “search for
the magic number” (Carter & Wilkins, 1976) because it involved experimentation with
caseload size to find the optimal ratio <strong>of</strong> <strong>of</strong>fenders to probation <strong>of</strong>ficers. <strong>The</strong> rationale
was that smaller caseloads would allow probation <strong>of</strong>ficers to spend more time helping
56