State-level changes in racial disparities in probation and parole rates in the United States, 2001-2018

Although the public health field has increasingly studied the collateral consequences of incarceration, we know little about the health consequences of other forms of criminal legal contact, including probation and parole. Understanding spatial and racial-ethnic variation in probation/parole across US states provides new insights into how community supervision impacts population health disparities. However, state-level probation/parole prevalence has not been adequately described. Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Census for the years 2001 to 2018, we provide the first state-level estimates of probation and parole populations by race over time in the United States. We find large variation in disparities across states and time that is masked by national-level estimates. The US probation population decreased, and its racial composition remained steady between 2001 and 2018. However, in all but 5 states, the Black-White gap in probation rates declined. The Black-White gap in parole rates declined in all but 7 states. The extent to which these race-specific changes in probation or parole over time reflect adjudication processes favoring White people, and/or affect population health, warrant further investigation. This article is part of a Special Collection on Methods in Social Epidemiology.