Here’s a National Institute of Corrections article that has many useful and well accepted concepts. These include Risk, Needs and Responsivity and other best practices. These are difficult to implement in a probation resource-poor environment. Also note on page 15 that the probation terms cited as examples of best practices are a year or shorter. The focus of the article is dosage probation which is supported by drilling down into the probationer’s circumstances and implementing zero-based probation condition setting; set only probation conditions for which the need/responsivity for which is firmly established.
This study is one of a number which suggest only a moderate impact of incarceration on the crime rate:
This article (book chapter) has broader application than the title would suggest because it seems to be about a lot more than just electronic monitoring. The author argues that the data strongly recommends shifting a large segment of the jail and prison population to non-incarceration correctional choices.
MassCJ 