Fewer parolees returned to prison

The effort in Pennsylvania and across the country to reduce the number of techincal parole violators returning to prison appears to be having an impact on incarceration rates.  Technical parole violators are offenders who are under community supervision and are sanctioned for violating parole conditions in the community.

Technical parole violators have not committed a new crime but have failed to report as directed, used drugs or alcohol, failed to partipate in programming or left the jurisdiction without permission to name a few types of violations.  Often these violators are returned to prison and drive up correction costs.

A U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report says that of 500,000 parolees who leave supervision each year, 32 percent were reincarcerated in 2011 compared with 36 percent in 2008, which means that 30,000 fewer parolees were sent back to prison last year than three years earlier.

Read full report here:  http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ppus11.pdf