Why Are Probation and Parole Necessary?

CJ Far,Yahoo! Contributor Network
July 18, 2007

When I meet someone who is unaware of what I do, and answer their inquiry I usually get one of three responses. The first is usually either: How can you do that or I don't think I could do that. Next is usually either Do you like that kind of work or how can you deal with those people? The last is usually along the lines of: they should all be locked up.

The last comment usually irks me a little, even though I shared it before I started working here. You see, community supervised release is a very necessary component of the Corrections for a variety of reasons. I could argue rehabilitation, second chances, not incarcerating people with relatively minor offenses with hardened criminals ECT, and have some valid arguments, I believe, but let's take a very conservative approach. We can make two arguments, both having the same end result. So let's argue politics and money.

My state has 16 prisons currently operation at around 90% capacity. It's set in law that capacity cannot go over 90%. There are 2 new prisons under construction, and I believe 2 more planned. As a general rule, the number of probationers and parolees being supervised in our state rose about 19% in the last 3 years. We have 16 prisons that house adult inmates. They are close to 90 percent capacity. As of April of this year there were 18,178 men incarcerated. There were 1,156 women. And there were 10 juveniles who have been tried as adults. This gives us 19,344 inmates. There were, as of 2006, 10,148 women on probation. There were 32,583 men on probation. That's 42,731 people, more than twice as many as are currently incarcerated. There were also an additional 1,145 women and 8,003 men released on parole. That means that there are 51,879 additional people that need to be locked up. That means my state would need about 44 more prisons right now. Where are you going to put them all? Prisons are like toxic waste dumps; no one wants one in their neighborhood. Next, where will the money to build these come from, much less to maintain them?

Some facts about the current prison population in my state:

23.64 percent of the current population are incarcerated for homicide related crimes, 14.91 percent for sex offenses, and 16.26 for drug related offenses.

100 inmates, 98 men and 2 women are on death row. 1,738 inmates are serving life sentences, 252 without possibility of ever getting parole.

Of the death row inmates, 57 are white, 40 are African American, 1 is Hispanic, 1 Asian, and 1 is Native American.

14 have multiple death sentences with one having 7 separate death sentences.

Most death row inmates are housed in the Riverbend Facility, but a few are at Brushy Mountain.

3 of the 16 facilities are privately managed.

Tennessee now uses lethal injection as the method of capital punishment.

Some facts about probation and parole

35.27 percent of the probation population is African American, 61.73 percent is white, and 2.99 percent is other with a 0.01 percent not known.

48.87 percent of the parole population is African American, 48.72 percent is white, 2.39 percent is other, with the same 0.01 percent unknown.

Probably the largest single factor in why probation and parole exists in modern times is money. As of 2006 it cost $57.33 for Tennessee to house a single inmate for 1 day. An inmate on death row cost $82.08 per day. The last figures I saw on the cost of maintaining an individual on probation or parole was less than $3.00 per day. There are several advantages other than cost or course. For one thing, if the person is out of prison, he or she can work and pay a monthly fee to the supervising agency to lessen the burden on the taxpayers as well as continuing to support his or her family, hopefully keeping them off government assistance. It also lessens the chance of them picking up new and better ways to commit crimes from the other prisoners, lowers the risk of injury or disease they might contract in prison.

Of course there are disadvantages also, for instance the possibility or committing new crimes while free being the single largest. As of last year the rate of re-offending was about 21 percent. This means that 79 percent of the people on probation or parole did not commit new crimes. Committing a new crime is not the only thing that could result in probation or parole being violated though. Failing to comply with the rules can result in punishment including the revocation and incarceration of the offender. Some of the things that could result in this happening are failing to attend meetings, failing to follow the officer's instructions, testing positive for drugs, associating with known criminals, moving without permission, leaving the county or state without permission, failing to pay court costs or supervision fees, failing to maintain lawful employment, Some of these offenses would probably not result in incarceration, but would be punished in some other fashion.

The simply truth is we can't lock up everyone who commits a crime. The people I deal with are the ones who commit felonies, crimes punishable by a year or more of incarceration. If you add the offenders with less than a year of punishment I have no idea how many it would be. If you use the numbers I gave you, which are verifiable on the websites of the department of corrections and probation and parole, there are roughly 71,000 people serving felony sentences in the state of Tennessee now. It would cost over $4 million dollars per day to incarcerate them all, assuming we could find room to house them and people to watch them. It just isn't economically feasible. Add that to the fact that some people make a mistake and need a second chance. Some people do need to be locked up, and they will be because they won't succeed on community release and will end up where they belong.

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