Crime is very prevalent, which means officers have a lot of cases and a lot of offenders they have to supervise. One can imagine how difficult it must be to keep an eye on one offender let alone 70 of them, which on average OPs can have up to as many cases. As a result, probation and parole officers were encouraged to become tougher on offenders in order to scare them and prevent them from violating probation rules. They believed this method was less time consuming, as they would not have to heavily supervise each individual offender. However, this method has proven to be ineffective in reducing recidivism (Gleicher, 2013). Being tough tends to backfire. If there were a substantial number of officers available for supervision, it would not be necessary to use this tactic