The Criminal Justice System

Over five million people are under the supervision of the criminal justice systems in the United States. Approximately, 1.6 million are incarcerated in local, state, and federal institutions. The remaining, or almost 70 percent of those under the responsibility of the criminal justice system, are being supervised in the community on probation or parole. This means that at any one time a large number of U.S. citizens are in the community under correctional supervision. For example, nearly 2 percent or 3.8 million adult men and women in the United States were being supervised in the community on federal or state probation or parole in 1995 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997).
While probation and parole are both considered community corrections