SJC Exchange Library

To learn more about the impact probation revocations have on jails and to advance promising strategies to address them, CUNY ISLG funded the Urban Institute through the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) Research Consortium to conduct a mixed-methods study on how people on probation end up in jail incarceration and the impact of a program aimed at improving these outcomes with transitional housing support through the Adult Probation Department (APD) in Pima County, Arizona.

Using administrative data from the Pima County Jail and APD, case record reviews, and interviews with APD leadership, probation officers, judges, community-based housing providers, and people on probation, this study aimed to decipher the system-level trends in jail incarceration for probation violations and the key pathways to jail incarceration for those individuals currently on probation. It also sought to understand the impact of the transitional housing support program on short and long-term outcomes for people on probation receiving funding from APD for transitional housing.

Key takeaways include:

• Though probation violations represent a small portion of the total jail population in Pima County – and only a small proportion of the population on probation experience a jail-related outcome – these individuals have substantially longer average lengths of stay (ALOS), nearly three times as long as the pretrial population. Black individuals have the longest ALOS of any group.

• Evidence suggests that there are multiple pathways to jail for people on probation, including substance use needs and housing instability, and individuals facing these challenges are more likely to experience a violation and be incarcerated in jail. Support for these individuals is integral in continuing to reduce the overall probation population in jail in Pima County.

• Though the transitional supportive housing program did not have a significant impact on jail incarceration outcomes, it was a crucial force in supporting the well-being of people on probation in securing employment, attending substance use and other programming, and securing more permanent housing, highlighting the complexity of designing strategies to address probation violations and their causes.