From Brennan Center:
This essay is part of the Brennan Center’s series examining the punitive excess that has come to define America’s criminal legal system.
Community supervision — generally speaking, our systems of parole and probation — began in the 19th century as a peer-to-peer system of support. Community members came forward to assure the court or prison that they could help those convicted of crime to live lawfully outside of jail or prison.
In 1841, for example, John Augustus, a Boston shoemaker, persuaded the court to release a man to his care, convinced he could cure the man of his drunkenness. When he was successful, the Boston courts began using community care to suspend criminal sentences. In 1876, Zebulon Brockway, the warden of the prison in Elmira, New York, prevailed upon the authorities to release to community care men whom he believed were “rehabilitated.” In the early 20th century, states and counties established formalized systems of support and surveillance as the population of cities and towns grew.
Despite the transition to government agencies with professional staff and budgets, the fundamentally supportive nature of those systems remained in place well into the 20th century. For people released from jail or prison, staff were available to “reintegrate” them, to help them with the problems that might have led to their crimes in the first place, and to see that they succeeded. Today, however, many of those agencies are more primed to find and punish failure than to promote success. The length of supervision and the nature of the conditions have grown more onerous and punitive, and the consequences of failure more severe.
So, we ask: what happened? Continue reading >>>
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