Founded as either an up-front diversion from incarceration (probation) or a back-end release valve to prison crowding (parole), community corrections in the United States has grown far beyond what its founders could have imagined, with a profound, unintended impact on incarceration. With 3.9 million adults under community corrections supervision in America (more than double the number in prison and jail), probation and parole have become a substantial contributor to our nation’s mass incarceration dilemma as well as a deprivation of liberty in their own right.
A key component of this work is done through convening Executives Transforming Probation and Parole (EXiT), a group of current and former probation and parole executives who are working to reduce the number of people under supervision, reduce revocations and returns to prison for minor misbehavior, and make community supervision fairer, more helpful, and more reintegrative.