New Thinking in Community Corrections DECEMBER 2016 • NO. 3

V E R I TAS

HARVARD Kennedy School

Program in Criminal Justice

Policy and Management

Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections 

Wendy Still, Barbara Broderick and Steven Raphael

Executive Session on 

Community Corrections

This is one in a series of papers that will be 

published as a result of the Executive Session on 

Community Corrections.

The Executive Sessions at Harvard Kennedy 

School bring together individuals of independent 

standing who take joint responsibility for 

rethinking and improving society’s responses to 

an issue. Members are selected based on their 

experiences, their reputation for thoughtfulness 

and their potential for helping to disseminate the 

work of the Session.

Members of the Executive Session on Community 

Corrections have come together with the aim of 

developing a new paradigm for correctional policy 

at a historic time for criminal justice reform. The 

Executive Session works to explore the role of 

community corrections and communities in the 

interest of justice and public safety.

Learn more about the Executive Session on 

Community Corrections at:

NIJ’s website: www.NIJ.gov, keywords “Executive 

Session Community Corrections”

Harvard’s website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/

criminaljustice/communitycorrections

Corrections in the United States

Over the past three decades, the U.S. incarceration 

rate has increased to historic highs, while crime 

rates have dropped significantly. Today, the U.S. 

incarcerates more people than any other nation 

in the world. In addition to the 2.3 million people 

incarcerated in our nation’s jails and prisons, 4 

million individuals are on probation or parole 

at any given time. The individuals on probation 

and parole — who represent the community 

corrections system in America — are the largest 

part of the correctional system. Yet, this aspect 

of corrections has been largely absent from the 

national conversation surrounding incarceration 

rates and criminal justice reform — this despite 

the fact that community corrections presents the 

most obvious alternative to incarceration for many 

and perhaps the best opportunity for reforming 

the criminal justice system in ways that will 

promote public safety, efficiency and fairness.

Similar to the growth of prison populations during 

the past three decades, the number of individuals 

on probation in the United States has also grown. 

While there were 492 people on probation for every 

100,000 U.S. residents in 1980, this figure peaked in 
2 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

2007 at 1,425, and by 2014 had declined 

slightly to 1,214 (see figure 1). With 

nearly 4 million people on probation 

at any given time, this represents the 

largest correctional population in the 

nation. Interestingly, long-term trends 

in crime rates and arrests for serious 

offenses should have militated toward 

a smaller probation population. Arrests 

for serious offenses are at historic lows, 

especially for the relatively young. 

Figures 2 and 3 compare the likelihood 

of being arrested in 1980 and 2012, by 

age, for violent and property index 

offenses. While arrests for violent and 

property offenses are somewhat higher 

for individuals over 30, we observe 

pronounced decreases in arrest rates 

for younger individuals in the highest 

risk age ranges. However, arrests for drug offenses 

are up, way up, for all ages (figure 4) as are overall 

arrests for non-index crimes (figure 5). On net, the 

aggregate age-arrest profile changes very little 

as increases in less serious arrests have offset the 

decrease in arrests for more serious crime (figure 6). 

With lower crime rates, these higher arrest rates for 

lesser offenses likely reflect shifts in enforcement. 

In conjunction with stiffer sentencing and net 

widening in the application of probation sentences, 

the proportion of U.S. residents on probation has 

grown alongside the prison incarceration rate.

Figure 1. Correctional populations in the United States, per 100,000 U.S. residents, 

1980-2014

Number per 100,000 residents

Probation Prison Parole Jail

0

500

1,000

1,500

1980 1990 2000 2010

Year

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Key Statistics at a Glance, accessed June 30, 2016, at 

www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=kfdetail&iid=487.

Cite this paper as: Still, Wendy, Barbara Broderick and Steven Raphael. 

Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections. New Thinking 

in Community Corrections Bulletin. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of 

Justice, National Institute of Justice, 2016. NCJ 249946.

Today, many states and the federal government 

are reevaluating sentencing practices with the 

goal of using incarceration more sparingly. Some 

jurisdictions have scaled back their use of prisons 

through shorter sentences and greater use of 

alternative sanctions (for example, electronic 

monitoring, probation, short sentences to county 

jails). These reforms have been motivated in part 

by cost and population pressures. California 

provides perhaps the most salient example of a 

state being forced by a federal court to reduce its 

prison population to remedy overcrowded prison 

conditions. Notably, at least nine other states face 

capacity problems that would violate the conditions 

placed on California’s prison system by a federal 

court, suggesting that other states face the risk of 

losing partial control of their prison systems through 
Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections | 3

prison overcrowding lawsuits. Beyond 

such instances, other state reforms 

have been motivated by concerns 

regarding the differential impacts 

of the criminal justice system on 

minority communities, evidence of 

diminishing returns to scale in terms 

of the effectiveness of prison as a crime 

control tool, and a notable shift in 

public opinion regarding the proper 

role and scale of the U.S. criminal 

justice system.

Figure 2. Arrest rates for violent index offenses, by age, 1980 and 2012

Arrests per 100,000

1980 2012

0

200

400

600

800

10 20 30 40 50 60

Age

Source: Snyder, Howard N., and Joseph Mulako-Wangota, Arrest Data Analysis Tool, accessed 

June 30, 2016, at www.bjs.gov, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Washington, DC.

Figure 3. Arrest rates for property index offenses, by age, 1980 and 2012

Arrests per 100,000

0

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

10 20 30 40 50 60

1980 2012

Age

Source: Snyder, Howard N., and Joseph Mulako-Wangota, Arrest Data Analysis Tool, accessed 

June 30, 2016, at www.bjs.gov, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Washington, DC.

A New Focus on Community 

Corrections 

To use incarceration more sparingly, 

many jurisdictions are considering 

g r e a t e r u s e o f c o m m u n i t y 

corrections, probation diversions 

in particular, for many individuals 

who would otherwise have been 

sentenced to incarceration. A shift 

from incarceration to community 

corrections could present numerous 

opportunities for reform of the criminal 

justice system as well as significant 

challenges. This paper will discuss the 

need for a new model for community 

corrections that can improve public 

safety while recognizing that people 

on probation and parole are members 

of the communities in which they live 

and are supervised. A shift away from 

incarceration will likely increase the 

average severity of probation caseloads 

and add considerably to the workload 
4 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

of probation departments across the 

country absent profound changes to 

current practice.

We believe that substantial diversion 

f rom pr ison sentences towa rd 

community corrections is certainly 

possible, likely to be more effective 

in the long run, less socially harmful 

than current practices, and may 

even be cheaper. That being said, 

such a change would require that 

we deploy community corrections 

resources with greater strategy and 

efficiency. This means evaluating 

how we do business today, investing 

in practices that are proven to work, 

and abandoning practices that are 

ineffective. It also means strategically 

directing resources for monitoring 

and enforcement efforts to those 

individuals who need them the 

most. A more effective community 

corrections system also will require a 

shift in incentives, both for probation 

departments as well as for those under 

supervision.

Figure 4. Arrest rates for drug offenses, by age, 1980 and 2012

Arrests per 100,000

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

10 20 30 40 50 60

1980 2012

Age

Source: Snyder, Howard N., and Joseph Mulako-Wangota, Arrest Data Analysis Tool, accessed 

June 30, 2016, at www.bjs.gov, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Washington, DC.

Figure 5. Arrest rates for all non-index offenses, 1980 and 2012

Arrests per 100,000

1980 2012

Age

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

10 20 30 40 50 60

Source: Snyder, Howard N., and Joseph Mulako-Wangota, Arrest Data Analysis Tool, accessed June 30, 

2016, at www.bjs.gov, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Washington, DC.

Six general principles form the bedrock 

of this new model for community 

corrections: 

• Treat each individual on 

community corrections with 

dignity and respect. Recognize 

our common human capacity both 
Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections | 5

to make mistakes and to make a change for the 

better.

• Realign incentives in the criminal justice 

system. Cost considerations at the local level 

should not systematically favor incarceration over 

alternative sanctions.

• Impose the least restrictive sanctions necessary, 

and minimize the collateral consequences 

associated with criminal processing and 

conviction.

• Restore communities, and facilitate their 

health and safety in a holistic way.

• Reduce institutional bias and work to ensure 

that all individuals receive fair, equal access to 

the justice system.

• Evaluate what we do, invest in more practices 

that work, and abandon practices that do not.

From these principles follow several 

concrete policy recommendations 

that form the foundation of a new 

model for community corrections. 

These principles are enumerated 

and explained below, grouped by 

the objective to which they are most 

closely related. 

1. Treat each individual on 

community corrections with 

dignity and respect. Recognize 

our common human capacity both 

to make mistakes and to make a 

change for the better. 

Common humanity and respect 

must be the starting point for any 

successful corrections model. This 

mutual respect is the foundation for 

the wellness of officers, the success of individuals on 

our caseloads, and the trust and healing of victims. 

Faith in people’s ability to change is foundational 

to what we do, and much of our program support 

is designed to facilitate changed behavior in 

the individuals under supervision. Our focus is 

rehabilitative, rather than punitive, and we strive to 

facilitate improved outcomes both for people on our 

caseloads and for their communities. 

Recognizing that we all make mistakes yet are 

capable of change for the better would give rise to 

incentives that are (1) clear and predictable and 

(2) graduated and fairly calibrated to the behaviors 

we wish to encourage and those we wish to 

discourage. Communicated clearly and acted upon 

with certainty, a fair and certain incentive structure 

ties an individual’s progress through community 

corrections to their personal choices. Moreover, 

Figure 6. Arrest rates for any reason, by age, 1980 and 2012

Arrests per 100,000

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

10 20 30 40 50 60

1980 2012

Age

Source: Snyder, Howard N., and Joseph Mulako-Wangota, Arrest Data Analysis Tool, accessed 

June 30, 2016, at www.bjs.gov, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Washington, DC.
6 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

graduating rewards and sanctions to reflect the 

magnitude of one’s progress ensures that we do not 

over-reward or over-penalize and, in the process, 

short-circuit one’s rehabilitation.

There are numerous examples of incentives that 

have been structured to reward positive and 

discourage negative behavior, with appropriate and 

proportionate consequences.

Examples include: 

• Short or flash incarceration (currently in use in 

California and extensively in the HOPE program 

in Honolulu) for noncompliance has and can be 

used as an effective deterrent.

• Altering the schedule of random drug testing 

(moving toward lower or higher frequency) 

can be used to reward compliance or intensify 

scrutiny for those who continue to use. 

• Fine structures can be tied to behavior, with fines 

that decline (or previous balances forgiven) with 

better behavior. 

• Early release from probation can be granted for 

those who signal true desistance or a very low 

likelihood of further offending.

The final bullet point illustrates one of the hidden 

benefits of a clear incentive structure that should 

be taken advantage of in all community corrections 

settings.1 In particular, a clear set of incentives that 

require effort on the part of the person on probation 

or parole can serve to triage a caseload beyond the 

information available in a standard risk assessment.2 

With this additional information, systems can better 

target programming resources and monitoring 

efforts toward those who pose higher risk of failure. 

Moreover, better triaging would permit earlier 

discharge of individuals who are unlikely to offend 

in the future.

Take for example research findings on the 

relationship between time since conviction and 

criminal desistance. Several facts have emerged 

from this research. First, the likelihood of being 

rearrested drops with time since conviction, with 

particularly high risk early on. Second, roughly a 

third of those with felony convictions will have no 

further interaction with the criminal justice system. 

Third, it appears to be the case that with time, the 

offending rate of those with criminal histories 

eventually declines to the rate of those who have 

never been to prison. At present, there are only a 

few research papers that attempt to estimate this 

threshold. However, the findings to date suggest that 

within seven to 10 years, the arrest and conviction 

rates of those with felony convictions fall to that of 

the general population.3 

Assume for the moment that those who do not 

reoffend for seven years are fundamentally different 

from other convicted people who are placed in 

community corrections supervision. Criminologists 

refer to such individuals as immediate desistors. If 

we knew who these individuals were, we could 

concentrate our monitoring resources elsewhere 

and focus more traditional workforce development 

efforts on this very low-risk group, and for a much 

shorter time. If we rely solely on recidivism outcomes 

and time since release, we will have to wait seven to 

10 years to identify such individuals. However, what 

if we could use a clear set of incentives to identify 

these individuals sooner? More specifically, could we 
Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections | 7

create a structure that would allow these compliant 

immediate desistors to credibly identify themselves? 

This line of thinking was recently articulated in 

an article by the criminologists Shawn Bushway 

and Robert Apel (2012). The authors argue that 

policymakers should strive to create avenues 

through which immediate desistors can signal to 

corrections officials, parole and probation officers, 

or employers that they are low risk and deserving of 

early release, greater latitude while in community 

corrections, or better chances at procuring 

employment. Of course, the avenues for providing 

such a signal must be costly to the individual who is 

incarcerated, on probation or recently released from 

incarceration. If not, all releasees would signal that 

they were immediate desistors and attempt to reap 

the benefits associated with the label (and ultimately 

undermine the credibility of the signal). Alternatively, 

if acquiring the signal requires real effort on the part 

of the person in question (for example, participation 

and successful completion of an education program, 

honest efforts and success at complying with the 

requirements of a transitional jobs program), only 

those who are truly willing and able will send the 

signal in question.

One potentially fruitful source of a credible signal 

that has been overlooked by researchers concerns 

successful program completion. Bushway and Apel 

argue that many reentry programs, transitional 

employment programs in particular,4 generate 

substantial value in improving information about 

individual recidivism risk precisely through the 

signals that a successful program completion 

sends. While comparing recidivism outcomes for 

program completers to those who do not complete 

the program is likely to provide biased estimates of 

the effectiveness of the program due to selection, 

selective sorting of those in community corrections 

is exactly what we need to effectively triage caseloads. 

With this in mind, we should harness the value of 

such service providers as screeners and identifiers 

of good bets for less restrictive conditions or perhaps 

for early release from conditional supervision. One 

can certainly imagine many arrangements that 

may allow those who have decided to pursue a lawabiding path to self-identify. For example, completion 

of a demanding job-training program, substantive 

educational achievements, demonstrable good 

behavior while incarcerated, demonstrable efforts 

and success at victim restitution, and abstaining 

from drug use may all serve such a role.

Across all jurisdictions, our focus should be 

on achieving better outcomes. The structure of 

supervision — both in the community and in 

incarcerative settings — should be based on 

how best to rehabilitate people involved with the 

criminal justice system in order to have healthier 

communities and healthier community members. 

By providing opportunities and incentives for positive 

behavioral changes while holding individuals 

accountable, and using what individuals reveal about 

themselves to better triage community corrections 

populations, community corrections systems can 

deploy their resources with greater efficacy.

2. Realign incentives in the criminal justice

system. Cost considerations at the local level 

should not systematically favor incarceration 

over alternative sanctions.

Counties across the country face incentives for 

sending convicted people to prison whenever 
8 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

possible. In many instances, this leads to prison 

spells for relatively low-risk individuals who could 

be successfully managed in the community at lower 

social cost.5 At the county level, a local person who 

has been convicted and sent to state prison becomes 

the state’s financial problem. The marginal cost to 

the county of committing an additional incarcerated 

person is effectively zero, while the marginal benefit 

(in terms of criminal incapacitation and savings 

in policing and monitoring) can only be positive. 

While others may bear significant costs, the local 

jurisdiction does not.

We know that the actual budgetary costs of a prison 

sentence exceed the costs of sentencing someone to 

probation. The net social costs of these alternatives 

depend on the extent to which incarceration would 

prevent recidivism. It is certainly the case for some 

individuals convicted of crime that the added costs 

associated with incarcerating that person are worth 

it once one takes into account the crimes that are 

prevented as a result. However, for lower risk people 

who can be successfully managed in the community, 

the net social costs of less-restrictive sentencing are 

likely to be lower relative to a prison term. 

We should strive to align local cost incentives with 

the actual net social costs of alternative forms of 

punishment. If counties were made to face some 

portion of the marginal costs generated by each 

prison admission, one might expect local officials 

to be more selective in whom they send to prison 

and for how long. In legal parlance, wobblers are 

offenses that can be charged either as misdemeanors 

or felonies, with only the latter eligible for prison 

time. If local officials face some portion of the costs 

of sending someone to prison, wobblers may be more 

likely to be charged as misdemeanors. Moreover, 

those individuals who appear to be wobbling 

between a sentence of probation and prison (of 

course, a broader definition of a wobbler) may be 

more likely to receive the probation sentence when 

the county stands either to lose (if faced with a tax) or 

gain (if presented with the prospect of sharing in the 

resultant cost savings) from such a sentence. 

The recent experience of California illustrates both 

the great heterogeneity across counties in their use 

of state prison systems as well as the existing room 

to bring down prison populations by getting the 

incentives right. California’s prison realignment 

reform, implemented in October 2011, stopped 

the practice of revoking people on parole back to 

prison for technical violations and diverted other 

people convicted of low-level offenses to serve their 

sentences in local jails or in some form of community 

corrections-based alternative sanctions. Prior to the 

passage of this reform, the rate at which counties 

incarcerated their residents in state prisons varied 

dramatically, from below 200 per 100,000 residents 

in counties such as San Francisco to more than 800 

and even 1,000 per 100,000 in counties in the state’s 

Central Valley. Figure 7 presents a scatter plot of 

the change in each county’s prison incarceration 

rate between June 2011 (four months prior to 

the reform) and June 2012 (nine months into the 

reform period) against each county’s pre-reform 

incarceration rate in June 2011. The pattern in the 

figure is very clear. Those counties that experienced 

the greatest reduction in their incarceration rates 

as a result of the reform are the counties with the 
Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections | 9

highest pre-reform incarceration 

rates. Since the reform essentially 

scaled back the incarceration 

of people convicted of low-level 

crimes, this is clear evidence that 

the high-incarceration counties 

tend to punish low-level people 

with prison with relatively greater 

frequency.6

A side f rom demonst rat i ng 

r o om for de c l i ne, re c ent 

reforms in California have also 

demonstrated that counties can 

be quite responsive to both fiscal 

carrots and sticks. Reform to the 

state’s juvenile justice system 

provides a vivid example of the 

latter. In 1996, the state legislature 

passed a bill that greatly increased the monthly 

costs for juvenile admissions to the California Youth 

Authority (CYA), the agency that ran the state’s 

juvenile corrections facilities at the time. Prior to 

this legislation, counties paid $25 per month per 

CYA ward. Starting in 1997, the monthly payment 

increased to $150 per month for youth adjudicated 

for serious crimes. For youth adjudicated for less 

serious crimes, counties were required to pay from 

50 to 100 percent of the custody costs to the state. 

Subsequent legislation passed in 1998 capped the 

counties’ maximum annual per-ward payment at 

$31,200. Nonetheless, for all juvenile commitments, 

and especially for less serious crimes, the increased 

costs to counties created by the reform were quite 

substantial (California Youth Authority, 2000).

Figure 8 displays annual admissions to CYA 

institutions between 1980 and 2009. A vertical line 

is drawn indicating the last year (1996) preceding 

the increase in county costs for youth commitments. 

The results of the reform are self-evident. There is 

an immediate and sustained drop in admissions 

to CYA beginning in 1997. To be sure, there have 

been other reforms over the years that have 

reduced youth admissions and the population of 

incarcerated youth further. Additional legislation 

passed in 1996 facilitated the transfer of incarcerated 

youth convicted in criminal court to adult prisons 

if they would not complete their sentences before 

age 21. In addition, a state ballot initiative passed 

in 2000 increased the proportion of youth charged 

with serious crimes tried in adult criminal courts 

to those receiving lengthy sentences and admitted 

directly into adult prisons. However, these 

Figure 7. Change in county-level incarceration rates from June 2011 to September 2012 

compared to the county’s incarceration rate in June 2011 for California counties

Change in incarceration rate, June 2011 to September 2012

Incarceration rate, June 2011

-200

-160

-180

-120

-140

-100

-60

-80

-20

-40

0

0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200

Source: Lofstrom, Magnus, and Steven Raphael. (2015). “Incarceration and Crime: Evidence From 

California’s Realignment Sentencing Reform.” IZA Working Paper #7838. Bonn, Germany: IZA.
10 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

provisions apply to a small proportion 

of convicted youth in the state, with the 

lion’s share of the declining admissions 

evident in figure 8 driven by the new 

costs of admissions faced by counties.

E v i d e n c e o f t h e c o u n t i e s ’ 

responsiveness to positive incentives 

can also be found in the evaluation of 

the California Community Corrections 

Performance Incentives Act of 2009 

(California Administrative Office 

of the Courts, 2012). The act created 

a mechanism by which the state 

shares with the county any cost 

savings associated with reductions 

in incarceration driven by lower rates of probation 

failures. The county probation department must 

employ evidence-based community supervision 

practices and bring down probation failure rates 

and admission to prison to below a benchmark 

rate measured for the three-year period preceding 

the legislation’s passage. In the three years since 

implementation, probation failure rates have 

declined by 33 percent.

These policy examples suggest a reform option for 

reducing incarceration and fostering efficiency 

in the use of existing prison capacity. A change in 

policy that ensures that counties have some “skin 

in the game” is likely to unleash efforts at the local 

level to be more sparing in the use of incarceration, 

especially for relatively low-risk individuals. Of 

course, one would not want to punish poorer 

counties with an intergovernmental finance 

structure that charges higher fees to areas with 

demographics and other local conditions that lead to 

higher crime rates. However, some creative thinking 

could certainly generate schemes that better target 

incentives regarding marginal cases and that 

perhaps combine an implicit tax on counties with a 

corresponding transfer that leaves county budgets 

whole while discouraging excessive admissions to 

the state prisons.

For instance, the CYA fee structure in the example 

above nominally increased the cost for the most 

serious individuals. In other words, the state still 

picked up the tab for those committing the most 

serious offenses where diversion to an alternative 

non-incarceration punishment was simply out of 

the question. One could imagine a scheme that 

levied differential tax rates that increase as offense 

severity (and perhaps the severity of an individual’s 

criminal history) decreases and that increase for 

offenses where there is the greatest degree of crossjurisdiction heterogeneity in the proportion of 

people sent to prison.

Figure 8. Annual admissions to California Youth Authority state institutions, 

1980-2009

Annual admissions to California Youth Authority

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

4,000

4,500

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

< Last year before cost-sharing 

 requirement imposed on counties

Source: Raphael, Steven, and Michael Stoll. (2013). Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? New York, 

NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections | 11

Alternatively, one could imagine a block grant 

combined with an incarceration tax. A state could 

transfer to each county a fixed amount of funds 

for the purposes of criminal justice and safety 

expenditures to be allocated across potential uses 

at the locality’s discretion. The amount of the block 

grant could be conditioned on local population, 

crime rates and demographics. Pairing the block 

grant with a per-head annual tax for each person 

admitted from the county to the state prison system 

would create an incentive for using prison sparingly. 

In addition, the block grant structure would not alter 

the marginal cost of jail admission (i.e., the marginal 

cost of a local jail inmate would still be positive), as 

the intergovernmental grant is decoupled from the 

size of the local correctional population. Moreover, 

the additional resources in the block grant, and the 

higher relative price of using prison admissions, 

would create incentives for local officials to seek 

alternative policies that control crime while reducing 

prison admissions. 

An alternative strategy may be to assign a target 

incarceration rate to each county — based on 

existing state prison capacity, past crime rates, 

age structure, and whatever other demographic 

characteristics are deemed important and legally 

and ethically appropriate — and permit use of the 

state prison system free of cost within some narrow 

band around the target. Counties that come in 

sufficiently below the target could be rewarded 

with a grant for criminal justice expenditures that 

increases with the degree to which they incarcerate 

below the target, while counties whose countyspecific incarceration rates exceed their targets 

can be symmetrically taxed. Such a strategy may 

be particularly effective at identifying the marginal 

low-risk people, as counties that overuse the prison 

system the most relative to a defined benchmark 

would face the largest tax bill. In other words, 

achieved reduction in incarceration would be 

generated largely by reductions in incarceration for 

outlier counties with unusually high incarceration 

rates.

There is much room for policy experimentation 

here. Currently, incentives are biased toward overadmissions to state prisons. Moreover, local officials 

are quite sensitive to cost incentives. This should be 

harnessed in fostering a more humane and costeffective crime control policy.

An additional set of incentives that should be 

revisited concerns the reliance on fines and user 

fee revenues to finance daily operations. Fines can 

clearly be used as incentives or disincentives for 

specific behaviors. However, when fines and user 

fees are relied upon as a fundamental revenue source, 

decisions over fine levels and release from probation 

may be governed by considerations other than the 

successful rehabilitation of the justice-involved 

person. Schemes that propose to entirely finance 

community supervision at no cost to the county 

in particular deserve careful scrutiny, especially 

when outsourced to private service providers. Our 

primary goal should be to successfully shepherd 

people through to completion of their probation 

terms. We don’t need to impoverish people nor cause 

the build-up of arrears to the criminal justice system. 

In the aggregate, the legal financial obligations 

created by fines and fees generate a small portion 

of local government revenue, yet likely represent 

a substantial tax on the meager resources of poor 

households.
12 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

A recent study of 15 states by the Brennan Center 

for Justice documents the reach and cumulative 

effects of fines and user fees on individuals who 

become involved with the criminal justice system 

(Bannon, Negrecha and Diller, 2010). In addition 

to documenting a wide range of user fees and 

fines that add considerably to the debts of people 

recently released from prison as well as those on 

probation, the study notes the extensive use of 

criminal justice resources (for example, probation 

and parole officer time, the issuing of warrants, 

court hearings, and incarceration as punishment 

for failure to pay) devoted to collecting outstanding 

criminal justice debts. In many instances, sanctions 

for failure to pay are in direct conflict with efforts 

toward productive reentry into society. For example, 

several states revoke driver’s licenses for failure to 

pay, a sanction that likely has a negative effect on 

future employment prospects. Moreover, many 

states use outstanding debt as a criterion in deciding 

whether to release someone from parole or probation 

supervision, surely bloating caseloads beyond 

what is needed for maintaining public safety. The 

incentives that over-reliance on fines and user fees 

create for community corrections systems, as well 

as for people under community supervision, require 

careful reevaluation. 

To the best of our knowledge, it is impossible to 

tally total fines and fees paid by the poor and the 

outstanding legal financial obligations in the 

U.S., let alone the distribution of the arrearages 

across households and individuals of different 

socioeconomic status levels.7 Given the observable 

differences in who is involved with the criminal 

justice system, however, we would guess that 

the distribution of outstanding legal financial 

obligations is heavily skewed toward low-income 

minority males and disproportionately impacts 

the budgets of low-income minority households. 

We can, however, provide a rough estimate of 

annual payments for fines and fees collected by 

various levels of government using the 2012 Census 

of Governments: State and Local Finances data 

collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. The data include 

revenue and expenditure totals by category for each 

municipality in the country. Revenue category “U30: 

Fines and Forfeits” provides our proxy.8 This revenue 

source totaled $5.6 billion for municipalities and 

townships in 2012, and $2.8 billion for counties, 

giving total fine and forfeit revenue of $8.4 billion 

to county and local governments. States report an 

additional $6.8 billion in fine and forfeit revenue. 

Hence, we observe total fine and forfeit revenue of 

$15.3 billion for fiscal year 2012.9

Is this a large amount? This depends, of course, 

on the extent to which this is generated from 

sanctioning low-income households. Assuming 

that most of this burden falls on poor households, 

one might compare these fine and fee revenues to 

various income sources. For example, the Brookings 

Tax Policy Center estimates that in 2012 roughly 57 

percent of Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) benefits 

were accrued in households with cash incomes of 

$20,000 or less.10 With total EITC expenditures of 

roughly $60 billion, this implies an income transfer 

to these low-income households of roughly $34.2 

billion. Hence, the fine-and-fees total amounts 

to roughly 45 percent of the income transferred 

to poor households11 via the EITC and roughly 25 

percent of EITC expenditures more generally. We 
Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections | 13

could alternatively compare fine and fee revenue 

totals to total incomes for low-income households. 

The Census Bureau estimates a mean household 

income for the bottom quartile of households in 

2012 of $11,490.12 With 24.4 million households in 

the bottom quintile, this implies a total income of 

roughly $281.4 billion. Fine and forfeit revenues 

amount to 5.4 percent of total income for bottomquintile households.

To be sure, we can only speculate about who pays 

these fines and fees. It is certainly the case that 

some of this revenue is generated by fines and fees 

levied on higher income households. Moreover, 

we should note that as a proportion of total local 

government revenues, fines and forfeits constitute 

a minor revenue source (though as the recent 

case of Ferguson illustrates, this is not always the 

case).13 Nonetheless, given the socioeconomic 

and demographic characteristics of who becomes 

involved with the criminal justice system, these 

fines and fees must certainly fall disproportionately 

on poor households. The expansion of the criminal 

justice system along with the increasing use of 

these fines — likely driven, in part, by the costs of 

this expansion — are imposing a significant and 

regressive implicit tax. In imagining the future 

of community corrections, we should strive to 

not increase socioeconomic inequality through 

regressive taxation in the pursuit of public safety.

3. Impose the least restrictive sanctions 

necessary, and minimize the collateral 

consequences associated with criminal 

processing and conviction. 

We should limit the use of incarceration (both 

pre- and post-trial) to those who cannot be safely 

supervised in the community. The collateral 

consequences of a criminal conviction and, in 

particular, a spell of incarceration are many. Some of 

the socioeconomic domains explored by researchers 

include the following.14

Post-release employment prospects 

Holzer, Raphael and Stoll (2006) document an 

extreme reluctance among employers with regard 

to their willingness to hire formerly incarcerated 

people. In addition, Raphael (2011) documents that 

a high proportion of employers of relatively less 

skilled workers in California indicate that they are 

legally proscribed from employing people convicted 

of felonies. The audit research by Pager (2007) and 

Pager, Western and Bonikowski (2009) documents 

that this stated employer reluctance translates into 

large differences in job offer rates, with particularly 

low job offer rates for African-Americans with 

criminal records. Western (2002) finds that prior 

incarceration has long-term negative effects on 

future employment and earnings.

Health consequences for formerly incarcerated 

people and the communities from which they come 

Schnittker, Massoglia and Uggen (2011) provide a 

recent survey of research linking mass incarceration 

to health outcomes and health disparities. Some of 

the research reviewed actually finds that a spell in 

prison improves access to health care, as many of 

those who are incarcerated lack health insurance 

and likely underutilize the health resources that 

are available to them. However, there are also key 

research studies that find evidence of within-prison 

transmission of infectious disease (hepatitis in 

particular) and transmission of infectious disease 
14 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

through various channels in the communities from 

which incarcerated individuals disproportionately 

come. Moreover, Schnittker, Massoglia and Uggen 

(2011) review several studies finding evidence of 

unusually high levels of disability and stress-related 

illness among formerly incarcerated individuals. To 

be sure, the health effects of the massive increase 

in incarceration rates extend beyond direct effects 

on currently and formerly incarcerated people. 

Wildeman (2012) finds discretely higher infant 

mortality rates among newborns with incarcerated 

fathers who have no pre-incarceration history of 

domestic abuse. Moreover, the increased stress 

and reduced resources associated with having 

an incarcerated partner, son or father may be a 

factor in the relatively poor cardiovascular health 

outcomes for African-American women (Hedwig 

and Wildeman, 2013).

The children of the incarcerated

More than 50 percent of men in state prison and 60 

percent of women in state prison are the parents 

of children younger than 18 years of age (Glaze 

and Maruschak, 2010). Among the age groups that 

make up the bulk of the prison population (25 to 

34 and 35 to 44), the proportion that are parents is 

considerably higher, with the figure reaching 80 

percent among women in state prison between 

ages 25 and 34. Wildeman (2009) provides the most 

authoritative assessment of the risk of experiencing a 

parental incarceration for children born in 1978 and 

1990. For the 1990 birth cohort, 1 in 4 black children 

and 1 in 25 white children experienced a parental 

incarceration by the age of 14. Among black children 

born to high school dropout parents, half experience 

a parental incarceration by this age. A parental 

incarceration certainly impacts the material wellbeing of children. Johnson (2009) analyzes how the 

household incomes and poverty rates of children 

born between 1985 and 2000 were impacted by 

paternal incarceration using longitudinal data. In 

the year prior to a father’s incarceration, average 

annual household income in 1997 dollars stood 

at $38,960. During the period of incarceration, 

average annual household income dropped by 

nearly $9,000. Concurrently, the proportion of these 

children living in households below the poverty line 

is 22 percent prior to the father’s incarceration and 

nearly 31 percent during the father’s incarceration. 

There is also evidence of increased behavioral 

problems among children with an incarcerated 

parent. Wildeman (2010) analyzes the effect of 

parental incarceration on aggressive behavior 

among very young children. The author finds that 

aggressive behavior increases among young boys 

with incarcerated fathers. Moreover, this increase in 

externalizing behavior is concentrated among young 

children of men who have not committed violent acts 

and who are not abusive within their households. 

To be sure, one would expect heterogeneity in the 

effect of parental incarceration. In some instances, a 

parent’s removal from the home may be stabilizing 

and salutary to the extent that the parent is abusive, 

or the parent’s absence may tax the household’s 

resources. In addition, research on this topic faces 

the fundamental challenge of contending with the 

myriad factors that likely influence child outcomes 

and that are correlated with a parental incarceration 

(for example, poverty, drug use and exposure to 

violence). In fact, Wakefield and Wildeman (2014) 

provide evidence of such heterogeneity. This being 

said, our criminal justice system has expanded over 
Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections | 15

the past three decades toward punishing less serious 

offenses more severely. In essence, the disruptions 

caused by incarceration impact more children than 

ever before.

Political participation 

In many states, individuals with an active criminal 

justice status are denied the franchise of voting. 

According to a report by The Sentencing Project 

(2016), 48 states and the District of Columbia prohibit 

voting while incarcerated. In addition, 34 of these 

states do not allow those on parole to vote, and 30 

states prohibit voting among those on probation. 

Four states prohibit voting among all people 

convicted of felonies, even after having completed 

their sentences.15 The Sentencing Project estimates 

that 1 in 40 adults is unable to vote either due to 

current involvement with the criminal justice system 

or due to a lifetime ban for a prior felony conviction. 

Roughly 8 percent of adult African-Americans 

are currently disenfranchised, and in three 

states, over 20 percent of adult African-Americans 

are disenfranchised. There is at least one study 

(Uggen and Manza, 2002) that finds evidence that 

disenfranchisement of people convicted of felonies 

may alter electoral outcomes in very close races.

Racial inequality 

As is evident in each domain discussed here, 

the disproportionate representation of AfricanAmericans in the nation’s prisons and jails, 

African-American males in particular, translates 

directly into racial disparities in the collateral 

consequences of incarceration growth. Given the 

order of magnitude of incarceration growth over the 

past three decades, the criminal justice system has 

become a very important factor in aggravating racial 

inequality across multiple domains. 

The above list largely reflects the longer term 

effects of a conviction and a spell of incarceration 

operating through social stigma as well as the effects 

of being physically removed from society during 

formative years when others are establishing lives 

for themselves. However, there is some suggestive 

evidence that the process itself unleashed by a felony 

arrest and charge is disruptive and creates problems 

that then need to be remedied by community 

corrections. For example, many researchers 

studying the employment consequences of having 

served a prison sentence have documented a strange 

pattern in administrative employment data. To 

be specific, starting three to four quarters before 

one’s admission to prison, several researchers have 

documented a decline in quarterly employment 

rates and earnings in several states (see Kling, 2006; 

Pettit and Lyons, 2007; Sabol, 2007). One theory 

consistent with this pattern is that some personal 

crisis causes both job loss and criminal activity. Or a 

lost job may have propelled the individual toward the 

felony that resulted in a prison spell. An alternative 

interpretation of this pattern is that the arrest itself, 

and all that follows prior to a prison admission, 

has a negative effect on labor force participation, 

employment and earnings.

In fact, a recent study by Charles Loeffler at the 

University of Pennsylvania suggests that the latter 

explanation is the correct one. Loeffler (2013) 

matched conviction and arrest data from the Circuit 

Court of Cook County, Illinois, to quarterly earnings 

data from the state’s unemployment insurance 

system. Focusing specifically on individuals who 
16 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

were ultimately sentenced to prison, Loeffler 

analyzes how quarterly employment rates (measured 

as having any positive earnings in a formal job 

during the quarter) evolve in the time period leading 

up to incarceration. Loeffler’s innovation is that he 

is able to observe the date of arrest for the offense 

leading to the prison sentence, and thus can assess 

whether the extent to which the employment decline 

documented by many researchers pre-dates that 

actual offense generating the arrest.

Loeffler’s findings are succinctly displayed in 

figure 9. The figure shows the employment rates 

of soon-to-be incarcerated people in the quarters 

approaching their quarter of incarceration (set to 

zero along the horizontal axis) as well as the quarter 

approaching the arrest for the conviction resulting 

in the prison sentence (also set to zero but measured 

by the lighter shaded line). There are 

several notable patterns in this figure. 

First, the employment rates of these 

individuals are dismally low, with 

never much more than 25 percent 

registering positive earnings in the 15 

quarters preceding their incarceration. 

Second, the employment patterns prior 

to incarceration are consistent with the 

findings from prior research, showing 

substantial declines in employment 

especially during the year prior to 

the prison admission. Finally, nearly 

all the employment decline follows 

the date of arrest (or alternatively, we 

see little decline in the measured 

employment rate in the quarters prior 

to being arrested). Hence, the steep 

pre-incarceration rate declines in employment 

appear to be driven by the processing of the felony 

(i.e., the pretrial detention, court hearings, etc.). 

While we are unaware of a comparable analysis 

of individuals who are ultimately sentenced 

to probation, one would imagine that pretrial 

detention and court proceedings may hinder 

employment among those charged with serious 

offenses who are ultimately sentenced to jail, to 

jail with probation, or to a straight probation term. 

We tabulated data from the State Court Processing 

Statistics 1990 to 2002 Felony Defendants database 

to gauge the extent to which felony defendants who 

are ultimately sentenced to probation fail to make 

bail, be released on their own recognizance, or be 

released under some form of supervised release 

program. Roughly 53 percent of those charged with 

Figure 9. Path of employment rates in quarters leading up to arrest and quarters 

leading up to admissions to prison, estimated in Loeffler, 2013

Percent with non-zero reported earnings

Time from sentence to imprisonment Time from arrest leading to imprisonment

Synthetic time

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

-15 -14 -13 -12 -11 -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0

Source: Loeffler, Charles E. (2013). “Pre-Imprisonment Employment Drops: Another Instance of the 

Ashenfelter Dip?” Working Paper. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania.
Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections | 17

felonies who are ultimately convicted (of either a 

felony or misdemeanor) are placed under local 

probation jurisdiction (sometimes following a short 

jail sentence). Of these, 34 percent are detained 

pretrial.

An arrest and pretrial detention spell are 

certainly likely to interrupt one’s life and create 

an employment need, and perhaps a housing 

need, that then must be remedied by the charged 

person and in many instances their probation 

officer. Moreover, a criminal conviction may have 

long-lasting implications for future employment 

prospects. With these collateral costs in mind, we 

should limit the use of incarceration to those who 

cannot be safely supervised in the community. This 

stems from both our respect for the individual as 

a community member and our commitment to 

maximize the return on investment for each taxpayer 

dollar. Incarceration is the most costly sanction, and 

it is often not our most effective option because so 

many jails and prisons do not have the extensive 

rehabilitative programming necessary to meet all 

the needs of their inmates. When incarceration must 

be used, research tells us that short incarceration 

spells, implemented with swiftness and certainty, 

have greater impact than longer terms.16 Therefore, 

we should work with our partner agencies to ensure 

that sanctions are neither more severe nor greater in 

length than they need to be to effectively achieve our 

rehabilitative goals for an individual person.

In selectively using incarceration, we also believe 

that this should apply to pretrial detention as well as 

post-adjudication incarceration spells. Greater use of 

validated risk assessment tools pretrial, and perhaps 

more active monitoring of pretrial defendants 

coupled with expanded use of supervised pretrial 

release may minimize the adverse effects of case 

processing on employment.

4. Restore communities, and facilitate their health 

and safety in a holistic way.

We must recognize that people charged with crimes 

are community members and that our ultimate goal 

is to restore these individuals to productive roles. 

This community perspective requires us to view 

public safety differently. Typical views of public 

safety have considered keeping the community 

safe as a function of protecting it from people who 

commit crime, rather than recognizing that nearly 

all people charged with crimes will eventually 

return to community settings and become a part of 

those settings. We are concerned with the justiceinvolved person, not just as an individual but as a 

community member and potential neighbor. In this 

view, the health and safety of the community are 

inseparable from the health and safety of the person 

on our caseload. 

In order to assist the individual in taking on 

productive roles in their family, neighborhood 

and larger community, we reiterate that we need 

to reduce the collateral consequences of criminal 

convictions, as well as barriers to reintegration and 

rehabilitation, when public safety is not otherwise 

compromised. We know that even those who are 

rejoining the community in a healthy way face 

many barriers to obtaining housing, social services 

and employment. Improved access to each of these 

would increase public safety by helping individuals 

build positive roles in their communities. Currently, 
18 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

these barriers are both too high and too long lasting. 

We know from Blumstein’s research (Blumstein 

and Nakamura, 2009) on survival rates that an 

individual’s risk of reoffending falls dramatically 

after 10 or five or even three years, and yet people 

who have been law-abiding citizens for a decade or 

more still face difficulty obtaining work, housing 

and social services.17 Community corrections should 

serve as ambassadors to the business community 

to help them view justice-involved individuals 

differently. Moreover, if we are able to establish 

credible screening practices whereby our clientele 

may credibly signal their desistance from crime as is 

discussed above, we can serve this intermediary role 

for many in community corrections with confidence. 

Internally, we should consider whether and how 

formerly justice-involved people could use their 

talents and experience in our own organizations.

When we consider the person under supervision 

as a member of their community, rather than a 

person who the community should be protected 

from, it becomes clear that avoiding disruption 

to employment, schooling, housing and families 

will improve outcomes and save taxpayer dollars. 

Therefore, we should adopt the lowest possible 

sanction, and engage in restorative justice practices 

where possible, to avoid such disruption and prevent 

the individual from having to “reenter” their 

community at all. 

As such, we should offer opportunities for diversion, 

starting at the point of arrest, based on an individual’s 

amenability and qualifications for diversion, to 

maximize alternatives to incarceration that protect the 

public while holding individuals accountable. Models 

of community courts and other restorative justice 

practices have proved effective at providing services 

while avoiding the cost and collateral consequences 

of more traditional sanctions. By providing 

alternative sanctions in community settings, we have 

access to a broad range of services that can meet the 

criminogenic needs of a particular individual without 

being reliant on incarceration methods. 

Include survivors and families 

Because we strive to make communities whole, we 

also recognize that survivors of crime are an integral 

part of the justice process. Survivors have a role not 

only in the procedural aspects of justice, through 

restorative practices or providing impact statements, 

but also as members of communities who also need 

to be healthy and safe. We need to do right by the 

survivors while being fair with people who commit 

crimes. The latter requires that services should be 

provided to help them rebuild strong and healthy lives. 

Families of people charged with crimes, particularly 

children, often suffer along with their family member 

while the family member is involved in the criminal 

justice system. Children of incarcerated parents are 

at 2.5 to 3 times greater risk of becoming involved 

with the criminal justice system themselves. In 

this way, ensuring fair and effective treatment 

not only impacts the life of the currently justiceinvolved person but also the lives of the next 

generation. We should recognize and strive to break 

the intergenerational cycle of crime and incarceration 

by strengthening families and addressing their 

needs throughout the justice process. This requires 

an approach that is responsive to families’ needs 

and supports healthy family connections rather 

than hindering them. Examples include adjusting 
Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections | 19

visitation and housing restrictions, as well as 

providing supports to the individuals under our 

supervision. Here again, we aim to provide the 

lowest sanction that is safely possible, so that there 

is as little negative disruption in the lives of families 

as possible. Likewise, measures such as employment 

training, education, public assistance, and the 

removal of barriers to employment and housing 

are all measures that can increase public safety by 

helping justice-involved people build healthy lives 

and take on supportive roles within their families. 

5. Reduce institutional bias and work to ensure 

that all individuals receive fair, equal access to the 

justice system. 

We recognize that a key aspect of treating individuals 

with respect, dignity and a sense of community 

is working to counteract injustices, rather than 

perpetuating them. A key aim is to reduce 

institutional bias and ensure that all individuals 

receive fair, equal access to the justice system, 

including opportunities for diversion and alternatives 

to incarceration.

Part of the problem of institutional bias is that 

each segment of the justice system can become 

siloed, thereby worsening bias as an individual 

moves deeper into the justice system. We know 

that from the earliest points, the justice system has 

disproportionate minority contact. From the pretrial 

process onward, there are structural deficits that 

perpetuate unnecessary disparities, especially for 

low-income and minority communities. 

We strive to lead organizations that will not only be 

cognizant of such bias but work to combat it, both 

within our own organizations and through our 

collaboration with partners. To do so, we must have 

strong, effective interagency collaboration to facilitate 

a system-wide perspective. From that vantage point, 

we can see certain values that should stretch 

throughout the system if in fact our collective goal is 

to facilitate the health and safety of our communities. 

6. Evaluate what we do, invest more in practices 

that work, and abandon practices that do not.

Since our focus is on facilitating positive outcomes, 

and to be prudent stewards of taxpayer dollars, we 

should rely on data-driven decision-making and 

evidence-based practices in order to provide the 

most effective and efficient resources to people on 

our caseloads, as well as to victims and communities. 

We should implement science-based, data-driven 

approaches, which yield better outcomes and reduce 

future victimization over a punitive approach. As 

part of this, decisions for sanctions, supervision level 

and interventions should be based on an individual’s 

risk level and treatment needs. If we don’t have the 

ability to do some kind of assessment to determine 

what problems that person is presenting with and 

what needs they have, we will not be able to effect 

any kind of change in that person’s life. Again, as 

prudent stewards of public resources, we should 

ensure that our resources are being applied to those 

who pose the greatest risk to public safety, but also in 

the most effective manner possible. Evidence-based 

assessments provide the data with which we can do 

such targeting of resources. 

A focus on outcomes does not simply mean reduction 

in recidivism or victimization, although those are 

important goals. Inherent in achieving them, though, 

are more basic outcomes in the lives of people involved 
20 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

SUMMARY OF CORE PRINCIPLES AND PROPOSED POLICY SUGGESTIONS

Principle 1: Treat each individual on community corrections with dignity and respect. Recognize our common 

human capacity both to make mistakes and to make a change for the better.

• Create a set of incentives that is (1) clear and predictable, yet (2) graduated and fairly calibrated to the behaviors 

we wish to encourage and those we wish to discourage.

• Create mechanisms that permit those who are highly likely to be immediate desistors to credibly signal who 

they are.

Principle 2: Realign incentives in the criminal justice system. Cost considerations at the local level should not 

systematically favor incarceration over alternative sanctions.

• Cost incentives faced by local criminal justice systems (counties) should reflect actual social cost differentials 

associated with alternative sanctions.

• User fees and fines that arrest the rehabilitation and reentry process should be reevaluated or abandoned.

• Revenue incentives should not drive probation and parole release decisions.

Principle 3: Impose the least restrictive sanctions necessary, and minimize the collateral consequences 

associated with criminal processing and conviction.

• Limit the use of incarceration to those who cannot be safely monitored in the community.

• Base decisions for sanctions, supervision level and interventions on an individual’s risk level and treatment needs.

Principle 4: Restore communities, and facilitate their health and safety in a holistic way.

• Reduce the collateral consequences of criminal convictions, as well as barriers to reintegration and rehabilitation, 

when public safety is not otherwise compromised.

• Avoid disruption to employment, schooling, housing and families to improve outcomes and save taxpayer dollars.

• Offer opportunities for diversion, starting at the point of arrest, based on an individual’s amenability and 

qualifications for diversion — to maximize alternatives to incarceration that protect the public while holding 

individuals accountable.

• Recognize that survivors of crime are an integral part of the justice process. 

• Recognize and strive to break the intergenerational cycle of crime and incarceration by strengthening families 

and addressing their needs throughout the justice process.

Principle 5: Reduce institutional bias and work to ensure that all individuals receive fair, equal access to the 

justice system.

• Reduce institutional bias and ensure that all individuals receive fair, equal access to the justice system, including 

opportunities for diversion and alternatives to incarceration.

• Build strong, effective interagency collaboration to facilitate a system-wide perspective.

Principle 6: Evaluate what we do, invest more in practices that work, and abandon practices that do not.

• Implement science-based, data-driven approaches, which yield better outcomes and reduce future victimization 

over a punitive approach.
Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections | 21

in the criminal justice system. Housing, employment, 

physical and mental health, and positive relationships 

are all components of a productive and crime-free 

life. Policies that limit access to social services on the 

basis of criminal convictions are destructive to public 

safety because they remove crucial sources of support 

for justice-involved people who are in the process of 

rebuilding their lives. These collateral consequences 

also go against our first core value of the dignity of 

individuals and their ability to change. 

Endnotes

1. The following few paragraphs draw heavily from 

Raphael (2014).

2. There are several static and dynamic risk factors 

that are significantly predictive of future offending. 

However, measures of goodness of fit for several 

standard risk assessment tools reveal that these 

actuarial predictions are far from deterministic. In 

other words, within each risk category there is a fair 

amount of unexplained variation in actual future 

offending. With this in mind, the information that 

is revealed by one’s behavior over time provides a 

chance to improve our assessment of the likelihood 

of future offending. 

3. See Blumstein and Nakamura (2009) and 

Kurlycheck, Bushway and Brame (2012). 

4. There is a growing body of experimental impact 

evaluations (i.e., randomized control trials) 

of various programs designed to improve the 

employment prospects of former prisoners and 

other high-risk individuals with an eye on reducing 

recidivism (see Raphael, 2014). The results from these 

evaluations are mixed, with some showing promise 

and others showing disappointingly little impact 

on future criminal offending. Nonexperimental 

studies that simply compare program participants 

to nonparticipants generally show large differences 

in recidivism, with participants faring considerably 

better. Such differences are also observed within the 

programs subject to randomized control evaluations. 

For example, of those participants in New York’s 

CEO program who worked four quarters and were 

successfully placed in an unsubsidized job, only 10 

percent were arrested, convicted or incarcerated 

within a year. Among those who did not perform so 

well on the program, 44 percent recidivated (Bushway 

and Apel, 2012). From the standpoint of a programeffect evaluator, such a difference might be written 

off as due to unobserved differences in motivation 

between those who complete the program and those 

who do not. However, at a minimum, those who 

successfully completed the program are revealing 

that they as a group disproportionately comprise 

immediate desistors.

5. The following draws heavily from Raphael and 

Stoll (2014).

6. In a regression analysis of pre-reform county 

incarceration rates in California, differences in crime 

rates explain very little of the cross-county variation 

in the use of the prison system. On the other hand, 

penal ideology as measured by the proportion of 

local voters supporting sentencing reform initiatives 

and local poverty rates are very strong predictors. 

This analysis suggests that relatively conservative 

counties with high poverty rates are the most likely 

to send their offenders to state prison in California, 

holding constant the effects of violent and property 

crime (Lofstrom and Raphael, 2015).
22 | New Thinking in Community Corrections

7. The following few paragraphs draw heavily from 

Lofstrom and Raphael (2016).

8. The U.S. Census Bureau Government Finance 

and Employment Classification Manual (accessed 

September 25, 2015, at http://www.census.gov/

govs/classification/index.html) defined category 

U30, Fines and Forfeits as “Revenue from penalties 

imposed for violations of law; civil penalties (e.g., 

for violating court orders); court fees if levied upon 

conviction of a crime or violation; court-ordered 

restitutions to crime victims where government 

actually collects the monies; and forfeits of deposits 

held for performance guarantees or against loss 

or damage (such as forfeited bail and collateral).” 

This category excludes “Penalties relating to tax 

delinquency (report at appropriate Tax code); library 

fines (report at All Other General Current Charges, 

code A89); and sale of confiscated property (use 

Miscellaneous General Revenue, NEC, code U99).” 

9. Note, these revenues do not include transfers to 

the state from civil forfeiture proceedings whereby 

property alleged to be involved in the commission 

of a crime is confiscated by local, state and federal 

law enforcement and sold at auction. This would 

certainly add to the total financial burden imposed 

on low-income communities. The revenue category 

(U99, Miscellaneous General Revenue) is too 

broad and inclusive to infer the value of resources 

transferred through civil forfeiture.

10. See T07-0275 - Tax Benefits of the Earned Income 

Tax Credit, Distribution of Federal Tax Change 

by Cash Income Class, 2012, accessed October 2, 

2015, at http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/

displayatab.cfm?Docid=1937.

11. The federal poverty income threshold for a family 

of four in 2012 was $23,050.

12. See Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013, 

accessed October 3, 2015, at https://www.census.gov/

content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/

demo/p60-249.pdf.

13. Local government revenues in 2012 were roughly 

$1.1 trillion without intergovernmental grant 

revenues from the states and the federal government 

and $1.6 trillion with these intergovernmental 

transfers.

14. The following discussion draws heavily from 

chapter 8 of Raphael and Stoll (2013).

15. Although Governor McAuliffe restored voting 

rights to those with former felony convictions 

using his clemency power in 2016, Virginia’s laws 

governing disenfranchisement remain unchanged.

16. See Hawken and Kleiman (2009) for the evaluation 

of the HOPE program in Hawaii.

17. See Blumstein and Cohen (1987).

References

Bannon, Alicia, Mitali Nagrecha and Rebekah Dillar 

(2010). Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry.

New York, NY: Brennan Center for Justice, New York 

University School of Law.

Blumstein, Alfred, and Jacqueline Cohen (1987). 

“Characterizing Criminal Careers.” Science, 

238(4818): 985-991.
Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections | 23

Blumstein, Alfred, and Kiminoro Nakamura (2009). 

“Redemption in the Presence of Widespread Criminal 

Background Checks.” Criminology, 47(2): 327-359.

Bushway, Shawn, and Robert Apel (2012). “A 

Signaling Perspective on Employment-Based 

Reentry Programming: Training Completion as a 

Desistance Signal.” Criminology and Public Policy, 

11(1): 21-50.

California Administrative Office of the Courts (2012). 

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of 2009. San Francisco, CA: Administrative Office of 

the Courts, Criminal Justice Court Services Office.

California Youth Authority (2000). Population 

and Facilities Management Master Plan 2001-2006, 

accessed September 10, 2012, at http://www.cdcr.

ca.gov/Reports_Research/docs/research/five_year.

pdf.

Glaze, Lauren E., and Laura M. Maruschak 

(2010). Parents in Prison and Their Minor Children. 

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau 

of Justice Statistics.

Hawken, Angela, and Mark Kleiman (2009). 

“Managing Drug Involved Probationers with Swift 

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Author Note

Wendy Still is the Chief Probation Officer in Alameda 

County, California.

Barbara Broderick is the Chief Probation Officer in 

the Maricopa County Adult Probation Department.

Steven Raphael is a Professor in the Goldman School 

of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley.

Findings and conclusions in this publication are those of the authors and do not 

necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 


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Members of the Executive Session on Community Corrections

Molly Baldwin, Founder and CEO, Roca, Inc.

Kendra Bradner (Facilitator), Project 

Coordinator, Program in Criminal Justice 

Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy 

School

Barbara Broderick, Chief Probation 

Officer, Maricopa County Adult Probation 

Department

Douglas Burris, Chief Probation Officer, 

United States District Court, The Eastern 

District of Missouri, Probation

John Chisholm, District Attorney, 

Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office

George Gascón, District Attorney, San 

Francisco District Attorney’s Office

Adam Gelb, Director, Public Safety 

Performance Project, The Pew Charitable 

Trusts

Susan Herman, Deputy Commissioner for 

Collaborative Policing, New York City Police 

Department

Michael Jacobson, Director, Institute for 

State and Local Governance; Professor, 

Sociology Department, Graduate Center, 

City University of New York

Sharon Keller, Presiding Judge, Texas 

Court of Criminal Appeals

Marc Levin, Policy Director, Right on Crime; 

Director, Center for Effective Justice, Texas 

Public Policy Foundation

Glenn E. Martin, President and Founder, 

JustLeadershipUSA

Anne Milgram, Senior Fellow, New York 

University School of Law

Jason Myers, Sheriff, Marion County 

Sheriff’s Office

Michael Nail, Commissioner, Georgia 

Department of Community Supervision

James Pugel, Chief Deputy Sheriff, 

Washington King County Sheriff’s 

Department

Steven Raphael, Professor, Goldman 

School of Public Policy, University of 

California, Berkeley

Nancy Rodriguez, Director, National 

Institute of Justice

Vincent N. Schiraldi, Senior Research 

Fellow, Program in Criminal Justice Policy 

and Management, Harvard Kennedy School

Sandra Susan Smith, Associate Professor, 

Department of Sociology, University of 

California, Berkeley

Amy Solomon, Director of Policy, Office 

of Justice Programs, U.S. Department 

of Justice; Director, Federal Interagency 

Reentry Council

Wendy S. Still, Chief Probation Officer, 

Alameda County, California

John Tilley, Secretary, Kentucky Justice 

and Public Safety Cabinet

Steven W. Tompkins, Sheriff, 

Massachusetts Suffolk County Sheriff’s 

Department

Harold Dean Trulear, Director, Healing 

Communities; Associate Professor of 

Applied Theology, Howard University School 

of Divinity

Vesla Weaver, Assistant Professor of 

African American Studies and Political 

Science, Yale University, Institution for 

Social and Policy Studies

Bruce Western, Faculty Chair, Program in 

Criminal Justice Policy and Management, 

Harvard Kennedy School; Daniel and 

Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal 

Justice, Harvard University

John Wetzel, Secretary of Corrections, 

Pennsylvania Department of Corrections

Ana Yáñez-Correa, Program Officer for 

Criminal Justice, Public Welfare Foundation

Learn more about the Executive Session at: 

www.NIJ.gov, keywords “Executive Session Community Corrections”

www.hks.harvard.edu, keywords “Executive Session Community Corrections”

NCJ 249946

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