All Community Supervision

Compassionate Justice: The Smartest Investment We Can Make in Public Safety

Julie Truschel December 8, 2025

If you work in criminal justice long enough, whether in probation, parole, policy, courts, or corrections, you start to see patterns. Not just in criminal behavior, but in what actually works to change it. I’ve been honored to work in this system for decades and year after year, the data confirms one truth: punitive systems may control behavior temporarily, but compassionate systems transform it. Compassionate justice should not be mistaken

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From Compliance to Connection: The New Era of Community Supervision

Julie Truschel June 23, 2025

The field of community supervision is in the midst of meaningful transformation. Around the globe, probation and parole systems are shifting away from compliance-driven models and toward supportive, person-centered approaches. This evolution reflects a growing understanding that public safety improves when people are given the tools, trust, and opportunities to succeed. At the heart of this shift are bold conversations and innovative practices—and that’s where our work with the Supervision

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Understanding Decarceration: A Shift in Criminal Justice Reform

Julie Truschel February 17, 2025

In my ongoing exploration of alternatives to incarceration, I recently came across the term decarceration. While I stay up to date on criminal justice terminology and the meaning seems clear from its parts, it wasn’t in my dictionary and I had never heard it used explicitly as the opposite of incarceration. So, where did it come from, and what exactly does it mean? The term decarceration first emerged in the

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The Importance of Alternatives to Incarceration

Julie Truschel April 8, 2024

At the SAW Project, we promote the sharing of successful community-based supervision practices that keep people out of jails and prisons, while still holding them accountable for misdeeds.  Research has shown that people can be effectively monitored in the community rather than be incarcerated.[1] Whether this supervision is prior to adjudication (pre-trial) or post-conviction (direct sentence/early release on probation/parole), these alternatives to incarceration are vital to sustainable corrections systems.  As

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