The Hidden Crimes of Parolees
Many parolees who get sent back to prison for “technical violations” were also implicated in new criminal conduct.
By Barry Latzer and Kristofer Bret Bucklen
The Prison Policy Initiative declares that “non-criminal (or ‘technical’) violations are the main reason for incarceration of people on probation and parole.” Other advocacy groups, like the Council of State Governments and the Vera Institute, agree.
This sounds bad. Technical parole violations (TPVs) include things like missing an appointment with one’s parole agent, violating a curfew, or skipping a treatment session. Shouldn’t prison cells be reserved not for insignificant rule infringements but for real crimes?
In fact, they are. A nationwide survey of state prisoners from 1979 to 2016 found that people incarcerated for technical violations alone made up only about 12.5 percent of the prison population. It’s true that a substantial majority of parole violations leading to reimprisonment are classified as TPVs. But, as our own and others’ research finds, many of these TPVs are preceded by real crimes, usually leading to arrests.
We studied all TPV cases of reincarceration of parolees in Pennsylvania for a period of 22 months, from January 1, 2024, to October 31, 2025. A total of 9,517 parolees were sent back to prison during this period, of which 58.8 percent (5,596) were returned for a TPV. But it turns out that 18.7 percent of those 5,596 (1,047) had also been arrested for a new offense.
In other words, nearly one in five of the reincarcerated technical violators had been arrested while free on parole during the period just prior to their reincarceration. More than 10 percent of these arrests were for violent crimes.
In fact, one in five is an undercount. A significant number of the reimprisoned technical-violation parolees may not have been arrested (the arrest records are sometimes inaccurate), but their technical violation charges indicate that they committed crimes such as assault or illegal drug possession. For instance, one standard parole violation charge in Pennsylvania is labeled “assaultive behavior.” Another standard charge is labeled “positive urinalysis/use of drugs.” Charges like these indicate illegal behavior. When we added these violators to the count, we found that more than one in three technical violators appear to have committed a criminal offense while under supervision and just prior to their return to prison.
Then there are the absconders—parolees returned to prison for not reporting to their agent (as required) for an extended period. If we add absconders to the mix, nearly half of technical violators who are returned to prison either showed criminal behavior or were on the run before being returned. Absconding should be taken seriously, in part because it can signal that the individual under supervision is attempting to evade detection or apprehension for new criminal behavior.
If they committed a crime, though, why are these individuals reimprisoned on the basis of a technical violation? Why not charge a crime and seek a conviction?
The candid answer: it’s faster, easier, and more likely to pay off for prosecutors to send someone back to prison through a parole-violation hearing rather than through the courts. The parole hearing is held before representatives of the parole board, without any need to seat a jury, and the standard of proof is lower (“preponderance of the evidence,” not “beyond a reasonable doubt”).
Is this unfair to the parolee—a lack of due process? No, because in over nine out of ten cases, both formal criminal charges and parole violation accusations play out the same way: with a plea of guilty in the face of overwhelming evidence. And why would the parolee admit his crime? Because he wants to get it over with, do his time behind bars, and get out again as fast as possible. Besides, parolees don’t expect due process in the form of a jury trial. They know they are subject to reincarceration through the parole revocation process.
Our Pennsylvania study is not the only one to find that technical violations are commonly accompanied by crimes. A federal study of 2021 cases by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts found that 34 percent of supervised release revocations (the feds don’t call it “parole”) for technical reasons also involved arrests for new crimes. The study concluded that “revocations for technical violations had relatively negligible impacts on federal prison populations.”
Then there’s a California study, examining cases from 2003 and 2004. Using this study’s results, we calculated that 43 percent of the parole-board decisions to return the parolee to prison involved a combination of technical violations (mostly absconding) and criminal violations. Anecdotal evidence we have heard from other states further suggests that Pennsylvania is not an outlier.
In short, technical parole violations are not just technical. Parolees are reimprisoned because of additional crimes masked by technical violations. Moreover, they commonly engage in many more technical violations than parolees who are not revoked and reincarcerated. The federal study referred to above found that revocation cases averaged ten violations of release requirements while cases that did not result in revocation averaged six.
Moreover, the system is reluctant to reincarcerate technical violators. Most violators receive written warnings, treatment, and all sorts of alternative, less serious sanctions before being recommitted for a technical violation. Parolees rarely go back to prison on their first technical violation.
The problem is not unwarranted incarcerations for trivial reasons, as the anti-imprisonment advocates claim. The problem is recidivism.
Barry Latzer is an emeritus professor of criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of The Myth of Overpunishment: A Defense of the American Justice System and a Proposal to Reduce Incarceration While Protecting the Public. Kristofer Bret Bucklen is Director of the Bureau of Planning, Research & Statistics of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.
This seems intuitively true with my experience in correctional facilities.