We compiled, corrected, and analyzed 45 years of state-level probation and parole data, and found that while most (but not all) states have reduced the number of people they’ve placed under supervision, many states have had more people on probation than previously reported.

by Jacob Kang-Brown, June 2, 2026

pie chart shoring that the majority of people under correctional control are on probation or parole

Around two-thirds of all people under correctional control are on probation or parole. For data details, see the methodology.

Community supervision represents the largest segment of the criminal legal system and, much like incarceration, it is almost entirely a state- and locally-run enterprise. As we explain in Punishment Beyond Prisons, on an average day, around 3.5 million people are on probation or parole compared to 2 million people who are incarcerated. To put this into perspective, that means more people are on parole than are in local jails nationwide, and people on probation make up more than half of all people under correctional control of any kind.
But how has the number of people under supervision in each state changed over time? In this briefing, we clean up and piece together state-level community supervision data covering roughly the last 45 years to provide a clear view of supervision dynamics in each state, as well as how states compare to one another.

This briefing includes state-level annual data tables and detailed trendline graphics going back to the 1970s, at the start of a rapid expansion of incarceration and community supervision. Compiling these data required correcting data published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and updating estimates that states had previously reported during the 1990s or early 2000s. 1 Through this process, we discovered that many states have had more people on probation than previously reported. We also found that people under supervision are trending older, much like the rest of the criminal legal system.

To learn more about the data we used and the corrections we made, see the data discussion and the detailed methodology.

Community supervision has declined by nearly a third since its peak in 2009

After experiencing rapid growth alongside the jail and prison boom decades of the 1980s and 1990s, parole and probation populations have changed course. Between 2009 and 2024, the overall rate of people on community supervision across the United States fell by 31%. 2 This decline has happened nearly across the board: 41 states and the District of Columbia have substantially reduced community supervision rates over the past 15 years.

How did community supervision rates change between 2009 and 2024?

Table 1. Community supervision rates by region and state per 100,000 residents in 2009 and 2024, with difference and percent change. For all years of data, see the appendix tables.
Region Rate in 2009 Rate in 2024 Difference in Rates 2009 to 2024 Percent Change in Rates 2009 to 2024
United States 1,621 1,121 -500 -31%
South 1,849 1,356 -494 -27%
Alabama 1,227 1,021 -206 -17%
Arkansas 1,785 2,399 614 34%
District of Columbia 2,372 906 -1,466 -62%
Delaware 1,946 1,082 -864 -44%
Florida 1,457 786 -671 -46%
Georgia 4,964 3,501 -1,463 -29%
Kentucky 1,565 1,373 -192 -12%
Louisiana 1,466 1,206 -260 -18%
Maryland 1,888 1,346 -542 -29%
Mississippi 1,004 1,574 570 57%
North Carolina 1,165 628 -537 -46%
Oklahoma 1,246 1,225 -21 -2%
South Carolina 878 559 -319 -36%
Tennessee 1,910 1,645 -265 -14%
Texas 2,142 1,524 -618 -29%
Virginia 999 831 -168 -17%
West Virginia 557 619 62 11%
Midwest 1,659 1,186 -473 -29%
Illinois 1,019 989 -30 -3%
Indiana 2,253 1,441 -812 -36%
Iowa 871 1,093 222 25%
Kansas 785 657 -128 -16%
Michigan 2,119 1,209 -910 -43%
Minnesota 2,400 1,535 -865 -36%
Missouri 1,286 868 -418 -33%
North Dakota 687 820 133 19%
Nebraska 1,015 609 -406 -40%
Ohio 2,348 1,591 -757 -32%
South Dakota 1,159 994 -165 -14%
Wisconsin 1,172 1,040 -132 -11%
West 1,320 789 -531 -40%
Alaska 1,239 453 -786 -63%
Arizona 1,363 1,085 -278 -20%
California 1,180 485 -695 -59%
Colorado 1,812 1,587 -225 -12%
Hawai’i 1,582 1,016 -566 -36%
Idaho 3,887 1,966 -1,921 -49%
Montana 1,128 981 -147 -13%
New Mexico 1,141 712 -429 -38%
Nevada 614 693 79 13%
Oregon 1,648 1,115 -533 -32%
Utah 539 439 -100 -19%
Washington 1,569 1,108 -461 -29%
Wyoming 1,090 936 -154 -14%
Northeast 1,271 766 -505 -40%
Connecticut 1,640 886 -754 -46%
Maine 553 419 -134 -24%
Massachusetts 1,220 625 -595 -49%
New Hampshire 493 299 -194 -39%
New Jersey 954 491 -463 -49%
New York 886 448 -438 -49%
Pennsylvania 2,052 1,518 -534 -26%
Rhode Island 2,511 1,526 -985 -39%
Vermont 1,268 695 -573 -45%

Declining numbers of people on community supervision are primarily the result of courts placing fewer people on probation, specifically. Parole boards have also been stingier with granting release in recent decades, holding fewer hearings and handing down denials in greater numbers. In fact, nearly every state with discretionary parole is granting release to fewer people each year.

While the number of people on community supervision has been trending downward, supervision nonetheless remains at a high level compared to other forms of correctional control. Looking beneath the national-level data can help us understand what is driving these changes.

At the regional level, the South 3 had the highest rate of community supervision in both 2009 and 2024; the Northeast 4 had the lowest. While every region saw falling supervision rates, the drops were larger in the West 5 and Northeast than in the South and Midwest.6 Meanwhile, in both the West and Northeast, the total number of people on community supervision fell to less than 1% of the total state population (a rate of 1,000 per 100,000 residents). In 2009, only 12 states were below that 1% mark; by 2024, half of all states were.

A 50-state map showing states grouped into lower, middle, and higher rates of community supervision. States in the South tend towards higher rates, but all regions have states in the higher and lower groups.

Of the 10 jurisdictions that had, at minimum, a staggering 1 in 50 people on probation or parole in 2009, only two (Georgia and Idaho) continue to place people under supervision at such a massive scale today. 7 Even so, Georgia’s community supervision rate has fallen by almost 30% in that time.

Arkansas has earned the ignoble distinction of having the largest rise in the community supervision rate between 2009 and 2024. The state went from having 1,785 to 2,399 per 100,000 residents under supervision — an increase in the rate of 614 per 100,000 residents. Remarkably, Arkansas went from the state with the 14th highest rate of supervision in the country (below the overall rate in the South) to the second highest. It is also one of only six states that saw a growth in its supervision rate of 10% or more. 8 See our appendix tables for a detailed breakdown of supervision population counts and rates for each state since the 1970s.

The new, more accurate data we present offer new insights on historical trends in community supervision. For example, Illinois and Oklahoma both had more or less unchanged rates of community supervision in 2009 and 2024. 9 However, the uncorrected data published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics would give a different impression: that Illinois had reduced community supervision by 42% in that period.

Importantly, readers should note that, when interpreting trend lines in different states, changes in probation and parole populations over time are not inherently good or bad; they can result from a wide range of reforms across the criminal legal system. For example, more people on parole might mean that states are moving more people out of prisons in recognition of the fact that they don’t threaten public safety. Declining community supervision could reflect new policies lowering barriers to successfully completing a supervision term, like reducing the number of conditions or the use of carceral sanctions for violations. We argue that far more people should be granted parole, 10 which would reduce prison populations and return people to their communities, and that probation is overused for lower-level offenses. Determining the forces that have shaped probation and parole in each state is outside the scope of this briefing, but we hope the data series we provide can help others carry that work forward.

The age of people on community supervision has risen dramatically

As mass incarceration ramped up between the 1970s and 1990s, politicians stoked racism and criminalized youth as easy targets, leading to an estimated 2.8 million youth and young adults on community supervision in 2009. 11 By 2024, however, their number had fallen by two-thirds to under 1 million. Youth and young adults went from representing close to half of all people who were under supervision in 2009 12 to only a quarter in 2024. 13

Bar chart showing estimated number of people who had been on community supervision in 2009 and 2024 within the last 12 months, by age group.

While primarily a sanction for youth and young adults in the early 2000s, community supervision now appears to be more concerned with older adults and those living in poverty. In stark contrast to the drop in the supervised youth and young adult population, the number of people aged 50 or older who were under supervision grew by 2% between 2009 and 2024. 14

It’s worth noting just how much the parole and probation age distribution has changed in this time span. In 2009, 1 in 17 young adults were on supervision; for youth under 18, the rate was 1 in 30. For young people today, community supervision is a far rarer circumstance, inflicted on 1 in 65 people under age 18, and 1 in 59 young adults aged 18 to 25. For others, there has been much less of a change: in 2009, 1 in 33 adults aged 26 to 49 were on supervision, a rate that grew to 1 in 45 in 2024. Meanwhile, the supervision rate for adults aged 50 and older went from 1 in 130 in 2004 to 1 in 164 in 2024.

What we’ve learned about supervision data quality (and ongoing issues in certain states)

Questions advocates and researchers should ask about community supervision data

Advocates, journalists, and researchers working with state or local community supervision data may want to inquire about the nuances to get a better handle on what was actually measured.

Active vs. inactive probation: Many people on supervision are on inactive or “fee-only” statuses, where they may not have to report to a probation officer anymore. From the perspective of probation agency managers, moving people to inactive status reduces officer caseloads. But for a person still under this “inactive supervision,” a jail stay may still be hanging over their head if they fail to pay probation fees or other monetary sanctions on time. 15

Private probation: A number of states use private firms to conduct supervision. Sometimes these private firms are the only misdemeanor probation or pretrial supervision providers available in a local court. Other times they are one option for release among others, such as public probation supervision or bail bondsman. 16 Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) staff indicated to us that they do not include data from private probation agencies unless a state agency is already collecting that information (as is the case in Georgia and Florida but seemingly nowhere else). 17 This can lead to huge probation data gaps in places like Tennessee, where one in three people on probation appear to be supervised by a private company.

New forms of pretrial or post-prison supervision managed by county probation departments: In many states, county probation departments have taken on different kinds of cases due to reforms intended to reduce the number of people in jail or prevent people from being sent back to prison for minor issues while on parole. These can be called different things in different states: for instance in California — where counties are responsible for supervising most people released from prison via newer statuses called “mandatory supervision,” or “post-release community supervision” while technically supervised by probation agencies — these people may not be counted in some probation statistics.

“Dual status” people on both probation and parole: People with both open probation and parole cases — known as “dual status” individuals — make up a small share of the system, but they appear to be highly concentrated in certain states. BJS data are only available at the state level in the published datasets for year-end 2007 to year-end 2018, making it hard to know how many unique individuals are under community supervision, and how much double counting might be happening. 18

Person vs. case counts: For states that put a lot of people on probation, there may also be discontinuities when a state switches from “case-level” to “person-level” data, or de-duplicates records across counties (one person may have a probation case open in multiple counties in Georgia, for instance).

In vs. out of state: Some datasets may not count all people currently under community supervision in a state because people may relocate and be under supervision in a new state.

The fractured nature of correctional control across local, state, and federal jurisdictions makes it hard to truly comprehend the scale of mass punishment. While we typically rely on and trust data published by government agencies to produce our analyses, this research provided an opportunity to compare state and federal sources and correct what were, in many cases, obviously distorted datapoints. In this section, we give a high-level overview of some of the most common problems we identified in the data; you can skip ahead to read the full methodology for more detailed information on how we compiled these data and arrived at our estimates.

There are three different ways we honed the data to clarify trends in each state (impacting probation figures in particular).

line chart comparing Virginia's misdemeanor probation as reported by the state vs. as reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, revealing that the federal data falsely suggest recent massive growth

1. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) improved sample makes it looks like caseloads grew when they didn’t: Recent BJS methods are finally catching up to the extent of probation in states like Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia by collecting data from local (in addition to state) probation agencies. However, this change in collection practices has appeared in the data as a rapid rise in probation in those states. To the contrary, by constructing an accurate and comparable data set, we find that the number of people on probation in those states in recent years has been generally trending downward.

line chart showing that a Bureau of Justice Statistics estimate spiked due to a mistaken imputation, not reflecting reality of Minnesota probation population

2. Incomplete data reporting by probation agencies sometimes leads to over-estimates in BJS publications. The Bureau of Justice Statistics imputes (creates estimates for) missing or incomplete data, and sometimes does so in a way that leads to an otherwise unexplainable data spike in a single year. In Delaware, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Mississippi, BJS data appear to show sudden peaks in the number of people on probation, while alternative state-level data sources we found show those increases never actually took place.

line chart showing that California's corrected state data does not result in Bureau of Justice Statistics updates.

3. States often correct their data when they find errors, but the updates don’t always make it to BJS: In states like California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania, state agencies collect and synthesize probation information in ways that lead to data improvements over time. Unfortunately, the Bureau of Justice Statistics does not have a mandate to go back and collect this updated data, which would otherwise correct double counting, typos, and other issues. Neglecting these updates can enshrine errors in the historical record, as is the case with California’s peak probation population, which is actually quite a bit lower than reported by BJS. Worse, ignoring updates can obscure real-world changes. Take, for example, the real and sudden drop in probation cases between 2014 and 2015 in California due to Prop 47 making many criminal cases eligible for misdemeanor sentences that would have otherwise been felonies. The BJS data show a smoother decline, but subsequent data improvements from the California Department of Justice show that, while relatively small, the change was nonetheless much more abrupt.

Conclusion

As a true “alternative” to prison or pretrial detention, parole or probation can be an improvement over the status quo. Unfortunately, community supervision tends to be poorly designed as a way to balance accountability with connecting people to the services and treatment they need to achieve stability. Both probation and parole impose an excessive number of conditions on people that can be nearly impossible to comply with all the time. When someone on supervision is accused of violating a condition — particularly through behaviors that are not crimes — they are often incarcerated as a response, which only further destabilizes their lives. And “failure” is indeed common: Only about 36% of people successfully completed a term of probation, and 62% completed parole, in 2024. 19

Correctional control is practiced at an enormous scale in the United States, too often shuffling people back and forth between detention, incarceration, and supervision to the detriment of community health and public safety. It’s important for all jurisdictions to implement reforms to reduce and avoid correctional control as safely, efficiently, and as quickly as possible. Since community supervision is, like most of the criminal legal system, almost entirely a state and local affair, more accurate state-specific data (like those we’ve provided in this briefing) can help us see how the myriad supervision systems have developed over time. For those states that have genuinely reduced the burden of community supervision, it is worth understanding whether they can share lessons with other states, especially if they have been able to reduce incarceration as well.

Data and methodology

For this briefing, we collected comprehensive historical community supervisions statistics for each state. We compiled, or estimated when necessary, community supervision data comparable both across states as well as within states over time. The primary data for this briefing comes from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Annual Surveys of Probation and Parole (ASPP). Data like these have been collected for almost half a century, but the sampling and methodology have changed over time. When we identified inaccurate ASPP data, we discarded them, making adjustments and corrections with historical data from state or even local sources in some cases. 20 We also sought to include misdemeanor probation and private probation. 21 To obtain historical data from states, we used public records requests, data reports, and agency media inquiries as well as archival materials. 22 If no other data point was available and we could not be confident in the original source, we estimated or interpolated as needed.

These corrections and adjustments address inaccuracies as well as changes in counting or estimation practices in the ASPP. In sum, we’ve made a lot of corrections to some states and present a new way of looking at changes in probation and parole over time. The following table indicates the states for which we have made corrections to their data series:

Which states have probation data corrections?

Table 2. States with historical data corrections. Alaska, Idaho, Nevada, and West Virginia have known data issues but as of yet are unresolved.
State Note
California Minor corrections using state data
Georgia Minor corrections by discarding data that is known to have not counted private probation cases
Illinois Substantial corrections to historical series; corrections to enable comparisons using active caseload data as well as corrections to account for missing Cook County data.
Indiana Minor corrections using state data
Kansas Substantial corrections to recent data
Maryland Corrections using state data
Massachusetts Corrections using state data
Michigan Corrections to older data using state data
Minnesota Corrections using state data
Mississippi Corrections using state data
New Hampshire Minor correction using alternative Bureau of Justice Statistics data
New Jersey Corrections to enable comparisons using active caseload data
New York Corrections using state data
Ohio Minor corrections to older data
Oklahoma Substantial corrections including estimation to account for private probation and local District Attorney supervision
Oregon Corrections using state data
Pennsylvania Corrections to enable comparisons using active caseload data
South Carolina Corrections using alternative Bureau of Justice Statistics data
Tennessee Substantial corrections to account for historical local and private probation data
Utah Corrections to recent data, more data on local and private probation needed.
Virginia Substantial corrections to account for local probation.

While we have done our best given the constraints, a handful of states like Alaska, Idaho, Nevada, and West Virginia still have data with unresolved questions, especially due to limited coverage of people on lower-level misdemeanor probation. For those states, we remain cautious of the reliability of their estimates, and hope to eventually improve those with new information when it becomes available. Please contact us if you have any updated or improved data, and we will do our best to include it.

Data sources and methods

Compiling historical community supervision data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) required drawing from a range of sources. Together, these sources provide a high-level overview of community supervision in each state over the decades.

For this research, however, we wanted to look at the data more closely. We started by comparing the two counts of probation and parole populations BJS publishes as “year end” data for each year in consecutive annual reports: a count for December 31 of a given year, and another for January 1st of the following year (i.e., the following day). 23 Comparing these numbers can reveal dramatic changes, which often signal issues with the data. (Substantial changes from December 31 to January 1 generally would not reflect policy change or reform, and instead point towards some combination of delayed data gathering or reporting from agencies that respond to the survey, shifts in data definitions, expanded sample coverage, or other methodology changes. Depending on the year, these may not be described in detail in the BJS reports or datasets.) Where we saw inexplicable differences between the December 31 and January 1 counts, we then tracked down state or local data sources that could fill in the gaps. This led to major corrections in some states.

These kinds of data corrections are especially important for anyone trying to track the impacts of policy change or continuity. Errors may persist in states that do not provide public data on probation or parole, that fail to track information about misdemeanor probation or pretrial supervised release, or that fail to track people who are supervised by private probation firms. Again, please reach out to us if you have any updated or improved data, and we will do our best to include it.

Bureau of Justice Statistics community supervision data

To make the data series, we combined BJS data sources for community supervision as follows:

  • For probation data from 1977 to 1992, we manually compiled information from archived annual reports into a single table. 24 For parole data, a BJS spreadsheet report from 2013 collected information from 1975 to 2012, eliminating the need for manual data entry.
  • Then, we selected relevant information from each individual year public-use data files for the Annual Surveys of Probation and Parole (ASPP) from 1994 to 2018 available from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data.
  • Finally, we used state-level data tables from more recently published reports covering from 2019 to 2024.

In most Prison Policy Initiative analyses, we use the total number of people under supervision derived from an end-of-year count, but following BJS guidance, we used the most recently-published versions where possible. 25 In other words, we would take a January 1, 2010 number to stand-in for end-of-year 2009. The one exception was that we used the December 31, 2024 data for end-of-year 2024 (the 2024 report is the most recent available as of publication).

Supplemental data

Resident population data

For calculating rates per 100,000 residents in each state and year, we used annual resident population estimates based on U.S. Census population data processed for researchers by the National Cancer Institute’s SEER program, covering 1969-2024. Data are reported at the county level by year and we summed to the state level.

Incarceration data

For the incarceration data used in state-by-state graphics and published in the tables, we combined data from various sources on state prisons, local jails, and the federal incarceration system, which we detail below. Apart from the distinctive federal system and the District of Columbia, there are two main types of incarceration regimes in the states. In 44 states, there are separate locally-operated jails for people who have been arrested and are facing criminal charges or short sentences, and there are state-operated prison systems for people with longer sentences. Six states (Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai\0x02BBi, Rhode Island, and Vermont) have “unified” state-operated prison systems that also provide jail-like pretrial detention. 26 The District of Columbia was a unified system in practice until a 1997 law change, then became a unique, local-jail-only system, with anyone with a longer sentence doing their time in a federal prison. 27 Incarceration via the federal criminal legal system involves both the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) for longer sentences and detention and shorter sentences arranged by the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), which takes place in local jails as well as federal, private, and state prisons.

For each state, we combined incarceration data on state prisons and local jails, making sure to avoid double counting if a state held people for the state prison system in jails. 28 Similarly, we removed people incarcerated by federal agencies from local jail counts in each state, using data from our 2024 briefing. 29

We use state prison data from BJS primary sources like the 1978-2023 National Prisoner Statistics (NPS) file published in April 2026, and make adjustments to statewide local jail counts using these data as well. For the number of people in jail from 1970 to 2019 in 44 states, we use archived data published in May 2025 from the Vera Institute of Justice’s Incarceration Trends Dataset, a data source that combines BJS data collections on jails and other sources. In many states, we only have total incarceration data through 2019 because that is the year with the most recently-published statewide jail data for all states from the BJS Census of Jails. BJS has still not published the data file for the 2024 Census of Jails, but we were able to get comparable data for some states from other sources. For some states, statewide jail data is available for 2020-2024 and was published in Vera’s People in Jail and Prison in Spring 2021 and People in Jail and Prison in 2024 reports.

For states with unified state-local incarceration systems, we use National Prisoner Statistics (NPS) data for total incarceration numbers. For the District of Columbia, we compiled and combined data from a variety of sources. 30

For federal incarceration, to properly account for the overlap between U.S. Marshals (USMS) and the BOP, we use the data provided in the NPS to split the federal prison jurisdiction count into two parts: (1) people sentenced to a year or more, and (2) the jail-like portion of people that are either unconvicted or sentenced to less than a year. That jail-like portion of the BOP generally covers people also under USMS jurisdiction, but is an incomplete count of people incarcerated or detained by USMS because it is only those held in BOP facilities. So, we discarded that NPS partial count and collected data on the full scope of USMS detention from various historical documents. 31 The resulting data better represents the various parts of the state and federal criminal legal and immigration detention systems.

How we identified and corrected community supervision data

BJS annual reports and datasets usually contain state-specific notes indicating changes in reporting or other issues that might impact comparability. After a careful review of these notes, we realized that some data may have been erroneous estimates or reflected major changes in data reporting or counting practices but not underlying caseload changes. In recent years, not all large changes were explained with notes. Additionally, in reports for 2023 and 2024, we identified mathematical errors in some appendix tables, which incorrectly calculated percent changes in the number of people on probation in some states. 32 In order to address these problems, we looked at the year-over-year data and compared the trend lines to alternative sources of information. We also contacted BJS staff with questions, and sought data directly from state agencies that respond to the Annual Surveys of Probation and Parole (ASPP).

  • two graphs showing changes in probation population estimates in Virginia and Pennsylvania due to methodology changes
  • two graphs showing how other sources can fill gaps from methodology change sin probation data collection in Virginia and Pennsylvania
  • two graphs showing how missing data leads to misleading errors in probation population estimates in Massachusetts and Minnesota
  • two graphs showing how other sources can fill gaps from methodology change sin probation data collection in Massachusetts and Minnesota

Slideshow. Examples of data issues that can arise in Bureau of Justice Statistics publications and how they can be addressed using supplemental state data

  • two graphs showing changes in probation population estimates in Virginia and Pennsylvania due to methodology changes
  • two graphs showing how other sources can fill gaps from methodology change sin probation data collection in Virginia and Pennsylvania
  • two graphs showing how missing data leads to misleading errors in probation population estimates in Massachusetts and Minnesota
  • two graphs showing how other sources can fill gaps from methodology change sin probation data collection in Massachusetts and Minnesota

After these reviews identified problem areas, we moved forward in one of three ways: using an alternate source, discarding and interpolating, or using the best available data to construct an estimate.

  1. Alternate source. Often, a state agency maintains its own public records that can provide an accurate alternative to an erroneous BJS number.
  2. Discard and interpolate. In some cases, if there was no other source of information, the bad value could be replaced using prior and subsequent data that were believed to be accurate.
  3. Estimation with best available data. This approach is most commonly used for probation counts in states with separate state systems for felony probation and local systems for misdemeanor probation, and no central data reporting or case management system. We use whatever data sources are available to construct annual estimates. In those cases, we may still be missing some piece of the puzzle, like a current private probation count, but we estimate using data that is on hand.

As described below, some state data series might have more than one kind of correction.

Addressing double counting of people with more than one correctional status at a time

For the small pie-chart graphic, we adjust for double counting that could happen due to people having more than one correctional status at a time, such as being on probation and parole simultaneously. We count people with more than one status in their most restrictive category, with probation counted as the least restrictive and imprisonment as the most restrictive.

The “all other” incarceration category on that pie chart includes immigration detention, involuntary commitment, territorial prisons, jails in Indian country, and military facilities.

For the historical tables and graphics, we do not make adjustments for people with dual status cases. Data on these dual status cases are not reliably available for each state over time, but in cases where we do have detailed data, the percentage is usually quite small. Many states do not have capacity to report this information, and thus corrections (if any are made) would be for a subset of states. Since our other publications involving more recent data make adjustments to address people that may be on both parole and probation, there may be some differences in this report.

State-specific notes

For each state listed below, we provide notes on any corrections that we have made to probation or parole estimates.

California

Probation counts for the entire series are sourced directly from California Department of Justice statistical reports or open data. From 1978-2001, we use the statewide totals from Table 41 Adults on Active Probation as of December 31, 1966-2015 published in Crime in California 2015. For 2002-2024, we use the county-level Adult Probation data reported in California’s Open Justice data portal, summing Felony and Misdemeanor counts for the beginning of January in the following year, within each county, and then to the state level. This allows us to identify any counties that have need for further corrections: San Francisco reported no probation data for 2002-2005, so we use 2006 values to stand in. We replace San Joaquin County’s 2002 value with the 2003 number, and for San Bernardino County’s in 2014, we use the end-of-year number from December instead of the start of January 2015.

Delaware

The 2023 BJS report on probation shows an unexplained 85% rise in the number of people on probation from 2022 to 2023 that is not reflected in the Delaware Open Data on community supervision.33 Because the issue appears to have been resolved in 2024, we use the December 31, 2022 count for year-end 2022, and the January 1, 2023 count for year-end 2023.

Georgia

Georgia counties started using private probation agencies in 1992. BJS only started collecting data covering people under Georgia’s private probation supervision in 1999. Thus, we exclude data from BJS reports for 1992-1998 for Georgia and interpolate to replace year-end estimates from 1992 to 1997. As an example of the scale of the problem: the number of people on probation in Georgia for December 31, 1998 was reported at 151,865. On January 1, 1999, when private probation was included, the number of people on probation was reported at 278,669. We use this number for year-end 1998. This addresses a problem in the 1990s, when private probation growth was not accounted for, but there are other known issues with Georgia’s probation data.

As BJS has acknowledged, Georgia’s probation rate is likely inflated by duplicated records.34 That’s likely because people with multiple private probation cases, or cases in more than one of the 159 counties in the state, get counted twice or more. Georgia has many small counties, and it’s relatively common to have a case in more than one county. We have not made any corrections to account for this, but if we could reduce the number to address the problem, it could make a big difference because the probation rate is so high in Georgia and it is a relatively large state.

Illinois

For Illinois, we took care to harmonize data over the years to ensure that it measured supervision consistently, including both people supervised on pretrial release and sentences to probation, and not counting people on administrative-only probation. We took special care to confirm that probation in Cook County (Chicago) was accurately counted, cross referencing numbers in the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts data submissions to the Bureau of Justice Statistics with Cook County budget data.

Illinois probation data in BJS reports over the years are especially complicated because of shifting definitions that include (and then exclude) people with administrative-only probation cases, and problems with delayed statistics from counties across the state leading to inaccurate publications. This is especially an issue for data from Cook County, where the number of people under misdemeanor probation supervision or pretrial release make up a relatively large portion of people under community supervision in the state. Fortunately, the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts publishes detailed probation data for each year, and publishes the data that they submit to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.35

In most, but not all, years from the 1980s through the end of 2016, BJS counted both people on active as well as people on inactive, administrative-only probation. This changed in the combined 2017-2018 probation report, when BJS stopped counting those administrative cases in the probation total for December 31, 2018, reporting the active probation number as the total number for December 31, 2018.

Under the new counting rules for 2018-2021, BJS published data that almost exactly matched the report that was provided by the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts. They combined the number of people on active adult probation population with those on pretrial supervision, per the usual counting rules, and did not count anyone with an administrative-only case.

Meanwhile, starting in 2010 and continuing through the end of 2021, Cook County’s misdemeanor probation agency tended to report lower caseloads than were actually supervised. A review of budgets for the county’s Social Service Department indicates no substantial caseload drop off in this period, but statistics published by the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts do show a substantial decline in 2010, followed by a spike in 2022. These changes reflect differences in reporting, not substantially different numbers of people on probation or community supervision.36

Finally, in 2023 and 2024, BJS departed from the standard measures and narrowed the definition again, excluding people on pretrial supervision that previously had been counted. (Some of this may have been due to delayed reporting by courts across the state.) Fixing the data to make it comparable required getting an estimate for Cook County misdemeanors, counting pretrial supervision, and making an adjustment to remove people on inactive probation supervision in earlier years (1980s and early 1990s).

Indiana

Detailed, court-level and statewide probation statistics are published annually by the Indiana Judicial Branch through their Judicial and Probation Reports. We use their January 1 count to represent the year-end count for the prior year. These corrections involved only minimal changes to the dataset, and were done for 2003-2024.

Kansas

Kansas probation data had errors in the 1980s and early 1990s as well as from 2022-2024. In notes for the 1993 BJS report, Kansas indicated that they had reported 6-7,000 youth cases, and had been reporting youth cases previously. To correct for this, 6,500 cases were removed in 1993, and we scaled this to remove a portion of cases from 1987-1992 to taper this reduction down to zero.

In the 2024 BJS Probation and Parole report, Kansas had the largest decline in people on probation, from 13,670 on January 1, 2024 to 9,050 on December 31, 2024. This did not seem plausible so we reached out to the Kansas Department of Corrections and the Kansas Judicial Branch to confirm; they explained that the issue was from a data system migration and not a reduction in caseloads. If anything, caseloads will likely be reported at higher levels in the future. Thus, to smooth out the state’s trendline, for year-end 2022, we use the December 31, 2022 count, and for year-end 2023, we use the December 31, 2023 count. We carry forward the December 31, 2023 count for year-end 2024.

Maryland

The numbers of people on probation in Maryland for 2011-2024 were calculated using data provided by the Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services in response to our public information request. Because the data were for fiscal years 2011-2025, we adjusted to reach end-of-year estimates. For example, for year-end 2024 we applied the percentage of overall cases supervised that were probation to the total numbers of supervision cases at the end of fiscal years 2024 and 2025, and took the average. We then added to this figure the average of the Drunk Driver Monitoring Program’s caseload counts for end-of-fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

Massachusetts

The data for 1980-1984 and 2002-2008 were not comparable to other years,37 so we discarded them and interpolated data for 1979-1985 and 2001-2009. Then, noting inaccurate estimates in BJS’ 2023 Probation and Parole report for year-end 2022 and 2023, we instead use data from the Massachusetts Probation Services Research Department’s Caseload Review dashboard (excluding juvenile cases).

Michigan

Probation data prior to 1985 were not comparable to later data, so we replaced them with values that reflected interpolated growth from 39,875 in 1978 to 99,365 in 1985.

Minnesota

The year-end 2020-2024 counts of people on probation come from Department of Corrections’ 2024 Probation Survey (excluding juvenile cases). This addresses an imputation problem in the 2022 BJS report for Minnesota.

Mississippi

For 2022-2024, we replaced the counts of people on probation with estimated values based on numbers from the Department of Corrections from early January of each year. To account for the difference between BJS definitions and the Department’s, we added to those January numbers the average difference between the state report count and BJS report count from 2017 to 2022.

New Hampshire

Noting unexplained low numbers for the state in the 2020 BJS Probation and Parole report, we use the December 31, 2019 count for year-end 2019 instead of the January 1, 2020 count.

New Jersey

Notes on probation data for New Jersey in BJS’s 2015 and 2023 reports indicate that shifting reporting practices and definitions make the topline number of people on probation incomparable over time. Specifically, we see a large increase between the 2014 and 2015 report, and a 77% decrease (from 123,300 on December 31, 2022 to 28,170 on January 1, 2023) between the 2022 and 2023 reports. To correct for this and construct a roughly comparable set of data, we use the archived BJS data that indicates how many people were on active probation supervision in New Jersey at year-end 1989 and 1992-2014. This makes the data comparable with the numbers published in the 2023 and 2024 reports. (We discard data for 1988 and 1990-91, when active probation supervision was not published.) Because of changes that started in the 2015 BJS data collection, we calculated the difference between the overall probation count for January 1, 2015 (137,124) and the active probation supervision count in 2014 (43,901). This difference of almost 80,000 is the extent of the definition shift between 2014 and the 2015-2020 period. Thus, we subtract that difference from the topline reported probation counts for 2015-2020 to calculate our estimates. Starting with year-end 2022 (measured as January 1, 2023), we use the BJS reported number for New Jersey.

New York

Statistics on probation in New York State are collected by the Division of Criminal Justice Statistics (DCJS), and end-of-year counts of people under supervision are published each year. These numbers are more consistent than the numbers published by BJS, which have within-year fluctuations that are not substantiated by subsequent reports. This data from DCJS also helps to address a problem related to counts of probation cases versus counts of individual people on probation. While corrected by the state in submissions to BJS in 2003, the numbers throughout the 1990s and early 2000s reported by BJS are substantially inflated and do not represent accurate counts of people on probation. Thus, we turned to DCJS and found that the peak probation count in the state was in 1998 at nearly 139,000.38 Because we lack specific estimates for 1987 through 1997, we use linear interpolation between 1986 and 1998.

Ohio

Because of definition changes that make the data not comparable, we adjusted the counts for 1978 and 1979, and then replaced 1980-1983 with interpolated values.

Oklahoma

No central agency in Oklahoma is responsible for data collection, and data reported to BJS shifts definitions over time and is not internally consistent without corrections. The state Department of Corrections (DOC) supervises most people sentenced with felony probation; others may be supervised by municipal courts, District Attorneys, and private probation agencies. BJS reports have not reliably presented data on all parts of this system, and historically, they have generally understated the number of people on probation in Oklahoma. We combine the BJS data on state felony probation and some misdemeanor probation agencies with our estimate of District Attorney probation to create an estimate covering those types of probation for 2006-2024.

Oklahoma District Attorneys operate local probation (known as DA Supervision), which is a large share of probation in the state. DA Supervision programs were authorized and first started in 2005, and in Oklahoma City, DA supervision has crowded out DOC probation as the preferred form of sentence.39 DA supervision is possible for anyone not committed to the Department of Corrections, and both felony and misdemeanor convictions are eligible. It is unclear to us whether BJS has ever tried to collect data on DA Supervision populations. We use charts from state budget requests and other documents showing supervision fee revenues to deduce a lower-bound estimate of people on DA supervision in each year.40

Municipal courts also oversee probation, and BJS does seem to collect data from them, in recent years in particular. Private probation also operates in the state, sometimes via municipal courts. These cases are not collected anywhere that we can find in public reports. Our estimate combines the BJS data on state felony probation and some misdemeanor probation agencies with our estimate of District Attorney probation.

Oregon

The Oregon Department of Corrections maintains statewide statistics on people under community supervision, from parole and post-release supervision to probation, diversion, and conditional discharge. They provided January 1 counts from 1998 to 2025, which we used as year-end probation counts for 1997 to 2024. The result is quite similar to the BJS probation series but substantially corrects BJS data irregularities in 2017 and 2022-2024.

Pennsylvania

Our estimate comes from data published by two state agencies: The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency’s annual report on Pennsylvania County Adult Probation and Parole (which includes 117,000 people on probation, probation with restrictive conditions, accelerated rehabilitative disposition, pretrial bail supervision, as well as roughly 12,000 absconders from probation), and the Department of Correction’s (DOC) Monthly Parole Statistics report (which includes about 5,000 people on special county probation).

Pennsylvania provides community supervision through county agencies as well as the state department of corrections, and is currently undergoing substantial reforms after Act 44 was passed in 2023. Unlike most other states, the state DOC provides both probation and parole, as do county agencies. The counties also provide other kinds of community supervision, such as pretrial bail supervision, accelerated rehabilitative disposition, and county probation without verdict. In order to better understand trends in community supervision in Pennsylvania, we calculated estimates directly from state statistical reports from the Department of Correction, the Board of Probation and Parole, and the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. That is because BJS has shifted between different definitions over the years, dropping substantial numbers of people that were still under probation supervision.

From 2004-2019, it appears that BJS had been counting a wider range of statuses as being on probation: county probation, county intermediate punishment (or restrictive conditions), county accelerated rehabilitative disposition, county probation without verdict, county pretrial bail, absconders on those statuses, plus inactive county probation, as well as the DOC’s special probation. From 2020-2023, the count narrowed to ignore people on restrictive conditions, county accelerated rehabilitative disposition, county probation without verdict, and county pretrial bail, and appeared to count people on probation from other states supervised by the Pennsylvania DOC. This means that the BJS count for people on probation in Pennsylvania dropped 42% from 172,052 on December 31, 2019 to 99,798 on January 1, 2020. BJS maintained this narrower definition of probation in 2021-2024.

In order to make a comparable data set, we use a more comprehensive definition that counts people on county probation supervision under a broad set of statuses: restrictive conditions, county accelerated rehabilitative disposition, county probation without verdict, and county pretrial bail; however, we do not include those on inactive probation. This provides a count that is substantially higher than the most recent BJS estimates.

South Carolina

Our estimates for South Carolina probation are modified for a few years: for year-end 2006, we do not rely on the January 1, 2007 number of 43,284 people on probation published by BJS and instead use the December 31, 2006 number of 38,353. In 2010, South Carolina revised their reporting methods and submitted updated data correcting January 1, 2009 from 40,621 to 35,165. Because there are no updated data for year-end 2007, we estimate it as the average of January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2006 (36,759).

Because of a large unexplained increase in the number of people on probation reported in the 2023 BJS Probation and Parole report, we use the December 31, 2022 count instead of the January 1, 2023 count.

Tennessee

In Tennessee, people on felony probation are usually supervised by the Department of Correction. Additionally, in 1985 the state created a “Community Corrections Program” that covers people charged with a non-violent felony. That supervision is done by a variety of agencies: county agencies, nonprofit organizations, and human resource agencies (quasi-governmental agencies that provide social services created pursuant to the Human Resource Agency Act of 1973). The community corrections programs have statistical reporting obligations, and the Department of Correction produces regular reports on the number of people under their supervision.

For people convicted of misdemeanors the probation system is more complicated. There are no statewide statistical reporting obligations, and it does not appear that the Administrative Office of the Courts has reliable information on misdemeanor cases. The 1985 Community Corrections Act and the 1989 Criminal Sentencing Reform Act both encouraged the creation of probation options at the local level, especially for people who would otherwise be incarcerated in a jail for a misdemeanor. The law also allows private probation firms to operate in the state. In some counties, private agencies operate as the sole probation authority; in others, they operate as a supplemental agency. In addition to private firms there are county agencies and the quasi-governmental human resource agencies.

Thus, for Tennessee, we estimate the number of people on probation in local agencies as well as private probation firms for the years 1992 through 2024. For 2000 through 2024, we have been able to collect supplemental data. State probation data for felony charges is from the Tennessee Department of Correction’s Felon Population Update for Probation and Community Correction. Misdemeanor probation is run by local governments, who can operate their own probation agency or contract with a private firm; BJS started collecting publicly-run local probation data, but they do not collect private probation data.

For 2006-2023, we can directly estimate the private probation counts using data about fees paid to the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance’s Private Probation Services Council. The FY 2006-2015 data are from the 2018 Human Rights Watch report on private probation, FY 2014-17 data are from a 2018 state audit, and 2019-2023 are from a 2024 state audit. We interpolate 2018 using 2017 and 2019 data, and carry forward the 2023 estimate for 2024. Leveraging sample changes in BJS data collection from 2022 to 2023 (when they began collecting data from local public agencies), we were able to estimate local public probation in the state for year-end 2023 and year-end 2024, and then used these data to backfill an estimate of total local probation (both public and private).

Probation data prior to 1983 were largely undercounts and not comparable to later data, so we interpolate the data from a rough estimate of 13,500 for 1978 to 23,300 in 1983.

Utah

In Utah, probation is provided by the state corrections department, local agencies, and private probation firms. It appears that the number of people on probation in Utah has been understated for many years, possibly until very recent Bureau of Justice Statistics reports. For many years, BJS only collected data from the Utah Department of Corrections (DOC), Adult Probation and Parole, which supervises most felonies and some serious misdemeanor cases. Utah authorized private probation firms in 1990 but these have never been tracked by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Within Utah, there appears to be no reliable centralized source of information on the private probation data, and the state does not have infrastructure currently in place that collects the monthly reports that private probation firms are required to provide to sheriffs listing information on all people supervised. Further, local probation agencies have been created within the last decade and are not well understood or regulated, sometimes developing informally within a sheriff’s department unit, taking on felony cases and seeking to supplant the state’s Adult Probation and Parole (Cache County), other times within a county’s Department of Human Services (Salt Lake County).

Because Utah has such sparse data, we removed the most recent BJS data for 2022-2024 and replaced it with the number of people on probation supervised by the Utah DOC Adult Probation and Parole. This is a clear under-estimate, but it allows for historical comparison. It seems likely that this will change in the future, and we hope to update these data when more information is available.

Virginia

Our estimates account for both state and local supervision. BJS began collecting local probation data in recent years, so we attempted to collect more historical data. State probation counts are from the Department of Corrections and local probation counts were obtained via FOIA from the Department of Criminal Justice Services. We combine the local probation and state probation estimates for 2010-2024, and then smooth the line from 1997 to 2010.

Read the entire methodology

State graphs

The graphs made for this briefing are included in our profiles for each state:

and are available individually from this list:

Federal counts over time
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Footnotes

  1. The primary source of community supervision data, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Annual Surveys of Probation and Parole (ASPP), has been systematically excluding data on private probation and much of misdemeanor probation for decades. Recent improvements to the ASPP expanded collection of misdemeanor probation data but make trend analysis over the years impossible in many states without additional archival data collection. For more on this, see the data and methodology section.  ↩

  2. In 2009, there were 4,973,005 people on probation and parole in the United States. By 2024, that number fell to 3,813,420 — a decline of 23%. Because of growth in the general population, the rate fell by an even wider margin of 31%: between 2009 and 2024, the rate of people on community supervision declined from 1,621 to 1,121 per 100,000 residents.  ↩

  3. The South region includes Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.  ↩

  4. The Northeast region includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.  ↩

  5. The West region includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.  ↩

  6. The Midwest region includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.  ↩

  7. These jurisdictions included the District of Columbia plus Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas. In addition, Delaware was close at 1,946 per 100,000. See the appendix tables and methodology for more information.  ↩

  8. Only six states had increased supervision rates between 2009 and 2024, and they ranged from 11% to 57% increases. The six states were Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota, Nevada, and West Virginia. The number of people supervised by Utah’s state probation agency declined by 19%, but overall it may deserve to be on this list due to expanded local community supervision in the wake of a Justice Reinvestment Initiative reform in 2015. Questions remain about the comparability of the data because of expanded Bureau of Justice Statistics coverage of local probation agencies in the state. For more details please see the appendix tables and methodology.  ↩

  9. Oklahoma’s community supervision rate was 1,246 per 100,000 residents in 2009 and declined 2% (to 1,225) in 2024. Illinois went from 1,019 per 100,000 residents in 2009 to 989 in 2024, a reduction of 3%.  ↩

  10. In our two-part report on parole systems, we explain that parole hearings and releases have been slowing in dozens of states, lowering parole rates as people remain locked up instead.  ↩

  11. These estimates come from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which asks respondents questions about whether they have been under community supervision within the last year, such as having been on probation, parole, or supervised release. We combine respondents who indicate having been on probation at any time during the past 12 months with those that were on parole, supervised release, or other conditional release from prison at any time during the past 12 months. Because of the 12 month look-back period, these counts would be slightly higher than a single-day count of people on community supervision.  ↩

  12. In 2009, there were an estimated 6,589,000 people who had been under community supervision in the last year, and 2,813,000 (43%) were aged 25 or younger. These estimates are calculated from the public-use data files for 2009 and 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which asks respondents questions about whether they have been under community supervision within the last year, such as having been on probation, parole, or supervised release.  ↩

  13. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2024, there were an estimated 4,025,000 people who had been under community supervision in the last year, and 976,000 (24%) were aged 25 or younger.  ↩

  14. In 2009, an estimated 719,000 people aged 50 years or older had been under community supervision in the last year, compared with 732,000 people in 2024, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.  ↩

  15. For a broader discussion of legal financial obligations and monetary sanctions, see, Studying the System of Monetary Sanctions.  ↩

  16. For example, Colorado’s counties provide probation but may also contract with private probation firms that provide “supplemental” services like alcohol monitoring (SCRAM) devices for people convicted of driving under the influence. In Cleveland County, Oklahoma, people can sometimes secure pretrial release without bond via a private pretrial services program with daily fees.  ↩

  17. Email on file with author. According to Human Rights Watch research and an under-inclusive probation landscape document from the National Association of Counties and Pew, misdemeanor probation involves private probation agencies in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming. Colorado’s supervision of cases deemed low risk may be handled by private probation agencies. Oklahoma as well as Alabama and Mississippi have or have had private probation firms as well.  ↩

  18. At year-end 2018, 10 states had less than 1% of supervised people on dual status, and 11 states had none. Three states and D.C. had meaningful numbers of people on probation who were also on parole: Idaho with 49% of people on probation on parole, New Mexico with 9%, Arkansas with 4%, and D.C. with 3%. But this picture is incomplete: 26 states and the federal government provided no response to the question on dual status.  ↩

  19. These numbers reflect the share of probation exits (people coming off probation) that were successful completions, and parole exits that were successful completions from the BJS report, Probation and Parole in the United States 2024, appendix table 9 and appendix table 12.  ↩

  20. As one example, BJS expanded the Annual Survey of Probation starting in 2022 to cover more probation agencies. This expanded sample better captures information about people on probation supervision for lower-level misdemeanor cases. Yet, this expansion makes many states’ recent data quite different from earlier years when misdemeanor probation data may not have been collected, but did exist.  ↩

  21. Information in the Human Rights Watch reports on private probation helped point to sources that could be used in states with private probation systems. Those are from Profiting from Probation: America’s “Offender-Funded” Probation Industry (2014) and Set up to Fail: The Impact of Offender-Funded Probation on the Poor (2018).  ↩

  22. Publicly available sources ranged from state court system annual reports (Illinois or Indiana), state budget presentations (Oklahoma), Department of Corrections websites (Minnesota), private probation agency regulators (Tennessee) or attorney general open data (California). Archival materials ranged from state-specific resources like the New York State Archive’s collection of agency-specific websites, or general resources like the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. See complete state-level data notes.  ↩

  23. For example, the 2023 Probation and Parole in the United States report provides a count for December 31, 2023, and the 2024 report provides a separate count for January 1, 2024 — the very next day. BJS suggests using the newer January count to represent the year-end 2023 population, since it reflects any updates they’ve made since the prior year’s report.  ↩

  24. For reports covering 1981-82, 1984-88, and 1990, see the BJS Annual Probation Survey website.

    For 1978, 1979, 1983, 1989, and 1993, see State and Local Probation and Parole Systems, Probation in the United States, 1979, Probation and Parole, 1983, Correctional Populations in the United States, 1989, Correctional Populations in the United States, 1993.

    Data for 1991 do not appear to have been published.
     ↩

  25. See the note on the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2013 parole table, describing this practice of using the January 1 following-year data to update a December 31 prior-year count.  ↩

  26. Some communities in Alaska also operate jails, but these hold a very small number of people compared to the state system.  ↩

  27. This 1997 law, known as the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act, had a four-year phased implementation. The District closed seven prison facilities by 2001, mostly at the Lorton Complex in Virginia.  ↩

  28. The standard BJS jail statistics report the number of people in custody of local jails, regardless of the reason for their detention or incarceration. Since jails can incarcerate significant numbers of people on a contract basis for state prisons or federal authorities, we make adjustments to get estimates of people held under the jurisdiction of jail authorities (held on local or state charges or serving a local sentence).  ↩

  29. This means that we need to separate out people held in jails for state prison systems or federal agencies, such as the U.S. Marshals Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Bureau of Prisons, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  ↩

  30. For District of Columbia incarceration data, from 1978-2001, we use the National Prisoner Statistics dataset because it provides jurisdictional population counts for all facilities operated by the District, including the jail-like facilities. For 2002-2024, we use various reports from the District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, and the Department of Correction. We also supplement with data from the BJS Federal Justice Statistics series, which provides information on people sentenced to federal prison from the D.C. district court.  ↩

  31. USMS average daily detention populations for 1984-1992 are from a report in the December 1993 issue of Federal Probation; 1994-2011 are from the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee; 2012-2024 are from USMS annual reports for 2015-2024. We interpolated 1993 data.  ↩

  32. For example, in the Probation and Parole in 2024 report, appendix table 6, Adults on probation, by jurisdiction, 2024 shows that Kansas had 13,670 people on probation on January 1 and 9,050 people on probation on December 31. The report’s change column indicates that the number decreased by -50.9%. The actual percent change using the numbers reported in the table (4,610 divided by 13,670) was -33.7%.  ↩

  33. For Delaware Open Data we use the number of people by type of institution and include people with community supervision statuses ranging from probation to home confinement, restitution, and work release.  ↩

  34. See the probation data note for Georgia in 2015’s Probation and Parole in the United States: “Probation counts may overstate the number of persons under probation supervision because the county data collection has the capacity to report probation cases and not the number of persons under supervision. Probationers with multiple sentences could potentially have one or more cases with one or more probation agencies in one jurisdiction or one or more probation agencies in different jurisdictions.”  ↩

  35. For example, see the 2022 Illinois response to the Annual Survey of Probation.  ↩

  36. Budget information for each Cook County agency is published on the Cook County website. For example, see budget documents for 2011, 2015, and 2019.  ↩

  37. See probation notes related to Massachusetts in Probation and Parole 1986, and Probation and Parole in the United States 2010.  ↩

  38. See New York State Criminal Justice, 2007 Crimestat Report, page 36.  ↩

  39. A 2016 report commissioned by the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce’s Criminal Justice Reform Task Force in the wake of a jail crowding scandal recommended providing statistics on the number of people on DA Probation. This kind of information was unavailable at the time.

    Across the state, programs ramped up at different times: Tulsa started later, in 2008. There are 27 district attorneys in the state, and it seems that some may not have a probation officer on staff, but still have the ability to charge supervision fees of $40 a month. As of 2019, the law changed to require the fees to be transferred to the state General Fund, and then it is moved back to the DAs.
     ↩

  40. These documents include state budget requests from the Oklahoma District Attorney’s Council in 2014, 2021, and proposed legislation from 2023. We estimate the number of people on DA probation each year by taking the annual revenue reported by the District Attorneys Council (DAC) from monthly supervision fees, dividing by 12 months and then by $40 (one month’s fee) to get the daily average population subject to supervision fees. The most recent available data for 2024 indicated $10,110,749 in revenue, suggesting 21,064 people paying in an average month. However, this would only include people paying, and it appears that some people may have indigent status or do not pay but stay on probation, which makes this estimate a lower bound.

    According to an analysis from the Council of State Governments, during FY 2011, there were 38,836 people on DA supervision, 28% of which were people convicted of felonies. Our FY 2011 paying caseload estimate based on fees is 29,125, and the estimates range from 5,200 in 2005 to 31,200 in 2015.
     ↩

See all footnotes

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