People behind bars for probation and parole violations have been an obvious choice for release to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Brian Lovins, president-elect of the American Probation and Parole Association, says, “This gives us a big opportunity to challenge the need for incarceration for non-violent folks,” The Marshall Project reports. With many government buildings closed, check-ins at parole and probation offices are all but suspended nationwide. Many departments are doing drug testing only in the most high-risk cases. With jails overcrowded and courthouses shuttered, some departments have stopped making arrests for breaking rules of supervision—known as “technical violations”—unless there’s an imminent safety threat.
Reducing close pre- or post-release supervision is not without risk. Officers are using video and phone calls to keep in touch with people they supervise, but they lose some personal connection when they’re no longer in people’s living rooms, observing family dynamics, or visiting workplaces and taking with whoever manages the person there. Susan Rice, chief probation officer in Miami County, In., sees this as a “big social experiment.” She says, “We all think we have to supervise these people and be drug testing them constantly and following them around. If we stop doing that, do they fall apart? Get rearrested? Overdose? Will it really happen or will we see that they’re fine?” Supervision violations account for almost a quarter of people in prison nationwide, says the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center. Probation and parole caseloads are likely to rise in coming weeks as prisons and jails try to reduce overcrowding. “We’re all kind of freaked out,” said a Missouri probation officer. “Anyone that’s been around knows they can drug all they want, they can not report, they can abscond, and they’re not going back to prison right now.”