A Dual Experiment in Intensive Community Supervision: Minnesota's Prison Diversion and Enhanced Supervised Release Programs

Abstract

In 1990, Minnesota enacted legislation to implement an intensive community supervision program as an alternative both to prison and to routine parole. The National Institute of Justice funded RAND to evaluate the program. This article reports on two randomized field experiments designed to measure the implementation and impact of the programs. Detailed information on offender background, services received, and 1-year outcomes was collected for 300 participants. Results showed that the programs were fairly well implemented. Two-year follow-up results indicated that prison-diversion offenders under intensive community supervision posed no greater risk to public safety than those initially sentenced to prison. The prison-diversion program resulted in savings of about $5,000 per offender per year, but these savings were offset by the greater cost of intensive supervision for parolees.