Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

offenders. Probation or parole can be revoked if an

offender commits a new offenseor a technical viola-

tionof the conditions governing release (e.g., report-

ing to one’s officer, paying restitution, maintaining

employment).

Although the type of supervision approach can

strongly affect the rate of success (see below), the

general success of modern community supervision in

preventing crime and facilitating offenders’ reentry

into the community is modest. For example, the rates

of rearrest over a 2-year period among prisoners

released on parole and prisoners released uncondition-

ally are comparable (approximately 60%) once the

differences between the two groups in characteristics

such as criminal history are controlled. Perhaps given

their lower level of risk for re-offense, probationers

(59%) are somewhat more likely to successfully com-

plete their term of community supervision than

parolees (45%). Nevertheless, many probationers and

parolees fail supervision. Among policymakers, such

figures have prompted many to issue a call for

accountability in community corrections and some to

question whether probation and parole should con-

tinue to exist in their current form.

Responding to

Contemporary Challenges

The business of community corrections is challenging.

Management has become results driven. Generally,

inadequate budgets have tightened. Workloads have

grown astronomically in size and complexity. Many

offenders have substance dependence disorders and

serious mental disorders, which complicates supervi-

sion. Others have been convicted of sex offenses and

other violent offenses that demand close oversight.

The monumental challenge is to cope with a large,

complicated workload while improving the effective-

ness of supervision—to do “more with less.”

Given the staggering diversity across states in the

organization and oversight of community supervision,

there is no well-defined and homogeneous response to

this challenge. Probation and parole are practitioner-led

enterprises, with supervision philosophies and practices

that vary considerably across agencies and officers.

Despite this diversity, a few innovative responses have

gained enough traction across agencies to be viewed by

William Burrell as “strategic trends.” These trends

include creating formal partnerships with community

agencies (e.g., drug courts, school-based probation) and

developing specialized caseloads (e.g., for mentally ill

offenders, sex offenders). They are underpinned by a

larger drive toward reintroducing rehabilitation in super-

vision and implementing evidence-based risk assess-

ment, risk management, and supervision strategies.

Promoting Evidence-Based Risk

Assessment and Risk Management

Although many agencies have adopted a standardized

assessment of offenders’ risk of criminal recidivism

over the past decade, relatively few use these assess-

ments to inform supervision. Nevertheless, several

progressive agencies have begun using well-validated

measures to (a) inform decisions about whether

to release an offender to community supervision,

(b) identify an offender’s changeable risk factors for

recidivism (e.g., substance abuse) to target in interven-

tion, and (c) monitor changes in an offender’s risk state

over time. These measures include the Levels of

Services/Case Management Inventory (LS/CMI) and

the Classification Assessment and Intervention System

(CAIS). The accuracy of the LS/CMI in predicting

general recidivism and violent recidivism rivals that of

tools that are better known in forensic circles (e.g., the

Psychopathy Checklist–Revised). Unlike most foren-

sic tools, both the LS/CMI and the CAIS assess both

risk status (interindividual risk compared with other

offenders) and risk state (intraindividual risk compared

with oneself over time) and guide community supervi-

sion from intake to case closure. Moreover, use of the

CAIS has been shown to improve outcomes for proba-

tioners and parolees. For example, in a study of

approximately 44,000 offenders assigned to either

CAIS-supported supervision or regular supervision,

the rate of revocation for CAIS supervisees was 29%

lower than that for traditional supervisees.

Reintroducing Rehabilitation

Efforts to Improve Outcomes

Increasing empirical support for the “risk-needs-

responsivity” (RNR) principle is largely responsible

for agencies’ adoption of risk assessment tools and

their recognition that rehabilitation should be reintro-

duced in supervision. Meta-analytic studies show that

offenders are considerably (24–54%) less likely to

recidivate when programs match the intensity of super-

vision and treatment services to their level of risk for

recidivism (risk principle), match modes of service to

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