Providing Transitional Housing Support to Reduce Jail Incarceration Among People on Probation in Pima County, Arizona
The following is an excerpt from a blog originally posted on the Safety and Justice Challenge site. Funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the Safety and Justice Challenge helps jurisdictions across the U.S. implement data-informed strategies that reduce the misuse and overuse of jails and racial and ethnic disparities present across the criminal legal system. The CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance provides data and analytic oversight for the project.
A new study–“At The Intersection of Probation and Jail Reduction Efforts”–is a building block in understanding how probation, jail, and housing challenges intersect, and how providing transitional housing support can help reduce jail incarceration.
Probation populations have been a major driver of prison and jail incarceration in the United States through arrests for new crimes and technical violations, contributing substantially to mass incarceration. One recent national analysis found that a third of all people in jail were on probation at the time of arrest; 27 percent of the people in jail were there due to technical violations of probation. There are also substantial racial and ethnic disparities in probation sentences and outcomes.
Housing instability is also a major issue for people on probation and a serious factor in criminal-legal involvement, though there is limited research on this topic. One 2018 report found that formerly incarcerated people are nearly ten times more likely to experience homelessness than the general public. The increased risk of criminal-legal involvement, especially incarceration, can be particularly salient among people serving probation, who are required to report and maintain a valid address as a probation condition. Failing to do so can result in jail incarceration.
Our study came about as part of a national effort to lower jail populations. Pima County, Arizona has made reforms to address probation-related drivers of jail incarceration as a community participating in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC). The SJC aims to safely reduce jail populations and eliminate racial inequities in incarceration.