Latest official data reveal slight drop in mass number subject to community supervision nationwide

As reporting in this official press release, the "number of adult offenders under community supervision on probation or on parole declined by 1.3 percent during 2010, dropping to about 4.9 million adults at yearend, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today."  Here are some of the particulars:

Probation is a court-ordered period of correctional supervision in the community, generally as an alternative to incarceration. Parole is a period of conditional supervised release in the community following a prison term. At yearend 2010, about 1 in every 48 adults in the U.S. was on probation or parole, a rate lower than the 1 in every 46 that was observed in 2000.

The number of adult probationers declined (down 1.7 percent) for the second consecutive year, dropping to nearly 4.1 million probationers at yearend 2010. The entire decline in the community supervision population was attributable to the decrease in the probation population since probationers make up 83 percent of adults under community supervision.

During 2010, the number of adults on parole or other post-prison supervision increased slightly (up 0.3 percent), reaching about 840,700 parolees at yearend. The state parole population (down 0.3 percent) declined for the second consecutive year while the number of adult offenders on supervised release following a prison term in the federal system increased by 4.9 percent during 2010....

For the second consecutive year, the number of offenders discharged from probation supervision (about 2.3 million) exceeded the number who entered probation (about 2.2 million) during 2010, contributing to the decrease in the probation population.

The full BJS report with all this data and lots more, which is titled simply "Probation and Parole in the United States, 2010," is available at this link.