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Summary
Summary
With a foreword by Bruce Western
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR
The most comprehensive critique of probation and parole--and a provocative and compelling argument for abolishing both--from the former Probation Commissioner of New York City
Imagine if probation didn't exist. And I came to you with$80 million and 30,000 people the courts considered troubled and troubling. Andyou could do anything you wanted with that money to make New York Citysafer and help people turn their lives around. Would you go out and hire a thousandcivil service-protected bureaucrats to supervise people as they piss in a cuponce a week, and to tell them to go forth and sin no more?
--Vincent Schiraldi's Job Interview with NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg
We've heard a lot in recent years about the nearly 2.1 million people incarcerated in American prisons and jails. But what about the approximately 4 million more who are on probation and parole--monitored by the state at great expense and at risk of being sent to prison at the whim of a probation or parole officer for the least imaginable infraction?
Vincent Schiraldi was New York City probation commissioner under Mayor Bloomberg, supervising a system charged with monitoring 30,000 people on a daily basis. In Mass Supervision , he combines firsthand experience with deep research on the inadequately explored practices of probation and parole, to illustrate how these forms of state supervision have strayed from their original goal of providing constructive and rehabilitative alternatives to prison. They have become instead, Schiraldi argues, a "recidivism trap" for people trying to lead productive lives in the wake of a criminal conviction.
Schiraldi offers the first full and up-to-date account of these two key aspects of our criminal justice system, showing that these practices increase incarceration, have little impact on crime rates, and needlessly disrupt countless lives. Ultimately, he argues that they should be dramatically downsized or even abolished completely.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Former New York City Probation Commissioner Schiraldi debuts with a captivating account of the history and current state of criminal supervision in the U.S. Parole and probation were both created in the 19th century, the former as a way to grant early release to inmates who had displayed good behavior and the latter to keep convicted people out of prison altogether. Over the course of the 20th century, both morphed into a law enforcement tool of surveillance and a main cause of incarceration, according to Schiraldi, who notes that parole and probation violations now account for nearly half of all people entering prison in America. Schiarldi describes how people under criminal supervision experience it as a kind of torture due to the stress of constantly worrying about check-ins--some have even chosen to go back to prison instead of living with it--and much of the book details the negative impact mass surveillance has on the Black and brown communities it disproportionately targets. He focuses on Philadelphia, where a 2014 study showed that recidivism due to supervision violations was correlated to how vigorously people on probation were supervised, not the severity of their original crimes or misdemeanors. Drawing on his own attempts at reforming the system in New York (involving nonprofits to provide rehabilitative services for supervised individuals and drastically reducing the number of supervision violations issued), Schiraldi provides valuable insight for activists. This astute and accessible study illuminates a vital yet understudied topic. (Sept.)
Kirkus Review
Disturbing analysis of the little-understood, long-calcified systems of probation and parole. Schiraldi, the probation commissioner for New York City under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, had previously administered youth correction services in Washington, D.C., so he's familiar with the hidden costs of bureaucracies engendering an illusion of safety. The author's core argument is grim yet undeniable. Despite hopeful origins, the concept of mass supervision "morphed into a trip-wire into incarceration for millions of people who are not really free the way the rest of us not under supervision take for granted." The author makes his case in eight well-organized chapters, moving from supervision's history through key subtopics including racial bias and insidious movements toward privatization, which profit off the vulnerable. "The mission of an early probation advocate was that of a challenger to the status quo," writes Schiraldi, and it was frequently viewed as a mechanism for being soft on crime. Yet "by 1930 all states had parole," beginning an era the author characterizes as a "stew of optimism and paternalism." By the 1970s, this rehabilitative tendency was replaced by a punitive backlash based on flawed academic conclusions that "nothing works," and mass incarceration exploded. Indeed, many Americans now become incarcerated due to "non-criminal, technical violations" of probation rules. Schiraldi explores the impact on families and on communities of color--including flashpoints like the infamous case of hip-hop artist Meek Mill in Philadelphia--and how a persistent lack of funding has increased reliance on privatization and fee-based supervision, further impoverishing those ensnared in the system. He concludes by advocating for "approaches to both downsizing and completely eliminating community supervision," essentially through "collective efficacy" beyond law enforcement, while noting that "jurisdictions that have substantially reduced supervision have not suffered increases in crime." Schiraldi writes with compassion and an experienced eye, although his argumentative points are occasionally generalized or repetitive. An expertly developed contribution to progressive debates on civil liberties and imprisonment. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Table of Contents
| Foreword | xi |
| Introduction | 1 |
| 1 The Death of Rehabilitation | 29 |
| 2 Not Quite Free | 59 |
| 3 The Philadelphia Story | 84 |
| 4 Racing to Surveil | 107 |
| 5 Blood from a Stone | 132 |
| 6 The Limits of Incrementalism | 154 |
| 7 Starve the Beast: Studies in (Near) Abolition | 177 |
| 8 Incremental Abolition | 206 |
| Acknowledgments | 247 |
| Notes | 251 |
| Bibliography | 275 |
| Index | 307 |