Summary: Since 1980, the U.S. prison population has doubled. Accompanying this enormous increase has been a sharp rise in the cost of keeping these offenders in jail. The high cost of imprisonment has led to the proliferation of intermediate sanction programs, which offer a level of sanction between parole or probation and traditional imprisonment. Arizona's intensive probation supervision (IPS) program has dampened criminal activity, but only when offenders were directly under IPS control. Although IPS sentences reduced direct costs, additional requirements, such as mandatory jail time, could make total costs for IPS programs greater than those for traditional imprisonment. GAO has two main conclusions. First, even a prison sentence does little to stop some offenders from committing crimes once they are released and may even increase the likelihood that they will commit more crimes. This conclusion is supported by the fact that about half of the offenders in one Arizona county and a third in another county were arrested within three years of sentencing. Second, despite mixed results, intensive supervision has a role to play in corrections policy. The findings from Arizona, although not strong enough to recommend a major expansion of intensive supervision programs, do add to the growing body of research suggesting that these programs have merit. Given the lack of unambiguously successful alternatives, any option that controls crime and offers the promise of dollar savings deserves serious attention.
