Throughout this series of posts, I’ll be using North Carolina as a case study, partly because the state implemented major sentencing reforms in 1994 and 2011, so enough time has passed to detect possible effects. Just as important, North Carolina has great data.

A brief history. North Carolina’s Structured Sentencing Act (SSA) was enacted in 1994. The SSA implemented substantial changes to the state’s sentencing practices, expanding the use of probation and providing greater consistency and certainty in sentencing.  The passage of the Justice Reinvestment Act (JRA) of 2011 led to further changes in sentencing.  Here’s more on the SSA and JRA:  

“The SSA emphasized not only the diversion of some offenders from prison to probation, but also the creation of a middle option – the use of Intermediate punishments – for those diverted offenders. Intermediate punishments – i.e., enhancements to probation such as intensive supervision, special probation (split sentences), and day reporting centers – were meant to control the recidivism of offenders diverted from prison to probation… 

The majority of the changes under the JRA affected how offenders are supervised in the community, such as requiring the use of a validated risk and need assessment (RNA) to guide supervision and other resources. Delegated authority to probation officers was expanded, giving them authority to impose most of the current conditions of probation and to respond to violations by placing probationers in jail for 2- or 3-day periods (quick dips) without a court hearing. 

Under the JRA, prison time imposed for first and second technical violations of probation was limited to 90 days of imprisonment for felons, referred to as confinement in response to violation (CRV). The court is allowed to revoke probation and activate the suspended sentence in response to a third technical violation (i.e., after an offender has served two prior CRVs (felons) or two prior quick dips (misdemeanants)). Otherwise, revocation is authorized only if the probationer commits a new crime or absconds.”

— Correctional Program Evaluation: Offenders Placed on Probation or Released from Prison, Fiscal Year 2019. North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission, April 15, 2022.

Despite the reforms of 1994 and 2011, it’s hard to detect any positive trends in recidivist arrests for either probationers or prisoners in North Carolina, at least during the period of 2002-2019:

Actually, if we leave out the 2019 numbers, it looks like an upward trend in recidivist arrests since 2002. But those are just the overall numbers. The SSA and JRA sentencing reforms may have helped some subgroups of offenders stay out of trouble. That remains to be explored in subsequent posts.