Vincent Schiraldi at Harvard Book Store

Harvard Book Store welcomes VINCENT SCHIRALDI—former commissioner of the New York City Department of Probation—for a discussion of his new book Mass Supervision: Probation, Parole, and the Illusion of Safety and Freedom. He will be joined in conversation by SANDRA SUSAN SMITH—Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice and Faculty Director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management.

About Mass Supervision

We’ve heard a lot in recent years about the nearly 2.1 million people incarcerated in American prisons and jails. But what about the approximately 4 million more who are on probation and parole—monitored by the state at great expense and at risk of being sent to prison at the whim of a probation or parole officer for the least imaginable infraction?

Vincent Schiraldi was New York City probation commissioner under Mayor Bloomberg, supervising a system charged with monitoring 30,000 people on a daily basis. In Mass Supervision, he combines firsthand experience with deep research on the inadequately explored practices of probation and parole, to illustrate how these forms of state supervision have strayed from their original goal of providing constructive and rehabilitative alternatives to prison. They have become instead, Schiraldi argues, a “recidivism trap” for people trying to lead productive lives in the wake of a criminal conviction.

Schiraldi offers the first full and up-to-date account of these two key aspects of our criminal justice system, showing that these practices increase incarceration, have little impact on crime rates, and needlessly disrupt countless lives. Ultimately, he argues that they should be dramatically downsized or even abolished completely.

Praise for Mass Supervision

“Schiraldi combines the rare gifts of a memoirist and a reformer calling our attention to the mass casualties of our broken probation and parole systems. On the front lines for decades, no one is in a better position to help shrink and ultimately dismantle the problem of mass supervision than he is. Anyone in search of sanity and solutions must read this book.” —Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor at Harvard Kennedy School and the Radcliffe Institute

“With Mass Supervision, Schiraldi asks us all to consider what it means to be on ‘papers,’ that colloquial term for being under state supervision. Schiraldi knows what the rest of us don’t about probation or parole—and in this book he reveals it: from its history to all its present disasters. But more than this, Schiraldi offers a pathway forward, to less supervision and more freedom and more safety. That’s why this one matters.” —Reginald Dwayne Betts, founder and director, Freedom Reads, and author of Felon

“The iron grip of mass incarceration reaches far beyond the walls of American prisons and jails, and in Mass Supervision, Schiraldi spotlights poorly understood and operated systems of probation and parole. Schiraldi shines a light on how millions of Americans are surveilled and ‘supervised’ by the government in a way that neither respects their humanity nor leads to greater public safety. This paradigm-shifting look at an unexplored aspect of our criminal legal system is a must-read to make crucial changes in the name of justice.” —Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New Black

Mask Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.