The United States incarcerates 1.8 million people—but that figure doesn’t capture the full reach of the criminal legal system. Another 3.7 million people are also mired in the system because they are on probation or parole.

Probation, considered an alternative to incarceration, is a court-ordered period of supervision in the community for people convicted of criminal charges. At any given time, 3 million people are on probation, making it the most common criminal sentence in the United States.

A smaller but still significant number of people—approximately 700,000—are on parole, a form of early release from prison that allows people to serve the remainder of their sentences under community supervision.

People spend, on average, about two years on probation, but some can spend much longer, with maximum lengths of five years or more in 24 states and up to 10 years in three of them. The length of parole is generally determined by the underlying sentence and state laws. While on probation or parole, people must adhere to conditions, or rules, that are often wide-ranging, onerous, and unreasonable. Typically totaling between 18 and 20 requirements per day, those conditions can include the following:

• meeting regularly with a parole or probation officer, anywhere from several times a week to once a month, who may be several miles away and unreachable by public transit;
• paying supervision fees and fines and any other fees ordered by the court, often without regard to the person’s ability to pay;
• finding and maintaining full-time employment, which can be difficult for various reasons, especially if local employers will not hire people with a conviction history;
• attending specific programs, such as counseling or treatment programs;
• submitting to drug and alcohol tests, sometimes several times a week, which the person on probation or parole is often required to pay for;
• electronic monitoring, which, again, the person on probation or parole sometimes must pay for;
• following strict curfews that begin as early as 6 p.m., which can make it difficult to maintain employment;
• not changing employment or residence without permission;
• not leaving a designated area—which can be a city, county, or state—without permission; and
• not associating with people who have a conviction record, including family and friends.

Failing to follow any of these rules is considered a technical violation. In this way, relatively small missteps, like missing a check-in with a parole or probation officer or breaking curfew, can become punishable offenses that can result in incarceration—and they often do.

People on probation and parole live under daily scrutiny, making inadvertent and minor violations almost inevitable. Wesley Vaughan, who had an electronic monitor while on parole, wrote for Vera that “it felt like a crueler form of punishment than incarceration.” Similarly, Craig Caudill said that his parole requirements were so restrictive that he felt like he had less freedom than he did while incarcerated.

Balancing the demands of maintaining employment with frequent check-ins and court-mandated programs—often scheduled during business hours—creates significant obstacles. Even probation and parole officers and judges have expressed doubt about whether they themselves would be able to successfully meet such demands.

The impact in numbers

Although people typically aren’t incarcerated for missing meetings or breaking curfew, those on probation and parole can, and often do, go to jail or prison for these behaviors. In fact, people on probation or parole are more likely to be incarcerated for breaking these rules than for committing new crimes.

A report by the Council of State Governments (CSG) found that in 2021, 23 percent of state prison admissions resulted from technical violations while on probation or parole. Twelve percent of people in state prison—more than 120,000 people—were incarcerated for technical violations.

It’s more difficult to determine how many people are incarcerated in county jails for technical violations, because county jails don’t register admissions for technical violations in a unified way. Many jail management systems do not distinguish bookings due to revocations of probation or parole for technical violations versus bookings for new criminal charges. More commonly, available data reflects how many people are incarcerated for supervision violations, which include both technical violations and new offenses. Because of this, determining just how many people are in jail for technical violations is challenging—but we do have some data. In Ohio, for example, 39 percent of the jail population consists of people accused of violating supervision rules. Tennessee’s jails hold 9,280 people—30 percent of the total jail population—for alleged supervision violations.

A better way forward

According to the CSG Justice Center report, in 2021, states spent more than $10 billion incarcerating people who violated the terms of their community supervision. Of that, more than $3 billion was spent incarcerating people for technical violations, not for committing new crimes. These figures, too, likely underestimate the total cost because several states could not identify all the people in their prisons who were admitted for supervision violations. 

People consistently face unnecessary incarceration for failing to meet rules that are often ill-conceived and burdensome. In these cases, jail and prison serve as punishment for people who pose no risk to public safety—people already deemed safe to serve their sentences in the community. They are faced with impossible choices: between providing for their families and paying supervision fees, between showing up to work and attending court-mandated programs.

Incarcerating people for technical violations drives up jail and prison populations, leading to worse outcomes and consuming valuable resources. Our systems should prioritize setting people up for success, not failure. Rather than pouring resources into punishing those who can’t afford supervision fees or who miss check-ins, jurisdictions should adopt fewer, clearer rules for people under supervision with defined time limits. This approach can set people up to not only meet supervision conditions but also to succeed in their communities.