parole

A large group of community supervision leaders have appealed to criminal and juvenile justice systems to dramatically reduce the scope of probation operations as the nation deals with the coronavirus pandemic.

Probation and parole started out in the 1800s as rehabilitation efforts that tempered punishment with mercy. With the advent of the War on Drugs in the 1970s, rehabilitation and mercy became dirty words, and community supervision morphed into community corrections, emulating its big brother the prison as one more punitive response to poverty.

“Timing is everything,” CNN host and author Van Jones told a room full of law enforcement officials, gathered in San Francisco on Monday for the announcement of a new initiative that hopes to drastically shrink the number of Americans under the supervision of probation or parole.

   Today in San Francisco, more than 50 current and former probation and parole chiefs have signed on to a new initiative designed to reduce the number of adults who are under supervision in the country’s local probation and parole systems.

Taking a cue from a bourgeoning efforts to transform juvenile probation supervision, a group of justice reformers and agency leaders from across the country hopes to lower the nation’s reliance on adult probation and parole to provide what some call “mass supervision.”

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a law today that gives juvenile offenders convicted as adults a “meaningful opportunity” for parole. Senate Bill 260 creates a parole process that takes into account the age of juvenile offenders convicted in adult court.