The United States incarcerates our citizens at a higher rate than every other country in the world and in recent years the US criminal justice system has received a lot of attention for how reliant we are on extreme punishments, like incarceration as a crime deterrent. While incarceration tends to be at the very center of the discussion around criminal justice reform because it has the most extreme outcomes, less attention is given to the number of individuals under “community supervision” - an umbrella term for all people who are not literally held behind bars, but who are still monitored by criminal justice officers. Probation is the most common form of community supervision.

A broad look at probation in the United State between 2010 and 2018