Adaptations to COVID-19 in Community Corrections Agencies across the United States

ABSTRACT

Currently, there are more than 4.3 million Americans are under some form of community supervision. Much of the experience of traditional community supervision relies on face-to-face interactions. Individuals on supervision often require treatment or services typically delivered in face-to-face settings. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced community corrections’ agencies to quickly rethink how they do business, with limited existing research on how to adapt supervision protocols in the midst of a global pandemic. Using surveys of directors of community corrections’ agencies across the United States, the goal of the current study was to examine how community corrections’ agencies have adapted traditional supervision processes to address disease prevention and containment in addition to supporting client needs and community safety as a result of COVID-19. Changes implemented during the pandemic may have implications for the future landscape of community supervision. Understanding how and what agencies prioritize in a time of global crisis can provide a foundation for identifying sustainable changes as well as understanding future impacts on system and client-level outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• community corrections
• COVID-19
• parole
• probation
• pandemic
• alternatives to incarceration
• early release mechanisms
• prison reform

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The states represented in the sample are as follows: Northeast: Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont; Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio; West: Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington; South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation [grant number 2030344]. The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of community corrections agency staff to share their experiences during an extraordinarily difficult time.