Community-based corrections alleviate overcrowded correctional facilities, reduce taxpayer burden, and rehabilitate offenders, while providing effective, efficient low cost methods of supporting public safety, community rehabilitation, behavior modification and personnel responsibility, because it uses multiple approaches and involves both legislative and judicial personnel in all steps of the process. Community-based corrections facilities are located in the community and support diverse rehabilitative programs including restitution, community service and repayment of monetary fines (Moses, 2007). Community-based correction is not incarceration; there is accountability, responsibility and supervision with graduation within nine and twenty four months of enrollment (Honarvar, 2010). Probation, day reporting and house arrest, which use global positioning satellite tracking devices, are forms of community-based corrections, which cost less than five dollars a day (Honarvar, 2010). The efficiency by which community corrections reduce cost, prison populations, and decreases this rate judges should disposition to these programs in lieu of incarceration (Honarvar, 2010). The state spends taxpayer money on building correctional facilities and staff to supervise offenders, while the research shows reduced recidivism rates when community service and other alternative methods of rehabilitation are used (Hovarvar, 2010). However, to maintain the balance of justice and rehabilitation, society demands incarceration for all criminals. Judges continue to support determinate sentencing guidelines over reducing the taxpayer’s burden and placing victimless crime offenders in community workhouses (Taylor, 2011). The issues of restitution and pub...
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...the Community (3rd ed.) Anderson, Cincinnati, OH.
McCarthy, B.R., McCarthy, B.J., & Leone, M. (2001). Community-Based corrections. (4th ed.) Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, Belmont, California.
Moses, M. & Smith, C. (2007). “Factories Behind Fences: Do Prison “Real Work” Programs work?” Corrections Today. 69,102. Retrieved August 5, 2011 from ProQuest database.
Petersilia, J. (1998). Community Corrections: Probation, Parole, and Intermediate Sanctions. Oxford University Press, New York, New York.
References
Reeves, R. (1992). Finding solutions to the most pressing issues facing the corrections community. Corrections Today, 54 (8). 74-79.
Taylor, R. W. (2011). Juvenile Justice: Policies, Programs, and Practices (3rd ed.) McGraw-Hill, New York, New York.
Vyas, Y. (1995). Alternatives to imprisonment in Kenya. Criminal Law Forum, 6 (10), 73-102.
Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means of punishment.
Community based programs are alternative options available to juveniles, instead of incarceration that safely serves juveniles and give juveniles a second chance to become productive members of society. Community based programs aim to efficiently rehabilitate and prevent juvenile delinquency and reduce deviant behavior in juveniles (Alarid & Del Carmen, 2012).
Community supervision of law violators can achieve similar advantages and prevent the disadvantages of incarceration. There are both advantages and disadvantages to community corrections and incarceration. I support community corrections because I believe it has more positives outcomes and less negative effects than incarceration.
Cohen (1985) supports this sentiment, and suggests that community based punishment alternatives have actually led to a widening and expansion of the retributive criminal justice system, rather than its abolishment. The current criminal justice system is expensive to maintain. In North America, the cost to house one prisoner is upwards of eighty to two hundred dollars a day (Morris, 2000). The bulk of this is devoted to paying guards and security (Morris, 2000).
Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad
For county jails, the problem of cost and recidivism is exacerbated by budgetary constraints and various state mandates. Due to the inability of incarceration to satisfy long-term criminal justice objectives and the very high expenditures associated with the sanction, policy makers at various levels of government have sought to identify appropriate alternatives (Luna-Firebaugh, 2003, p.51-66). I. Alternatives to incarceration give courts more options. For example, it’s ridiculous that the majority of the growth in our prison populations in this country is due to people being slamming in jail just because they were caught using drugs. So much of the crime on the streets of our country is drug-related.
In 2008, federal, state, and local governments spent about $75 billion on corrections, with the large majority being spent on incarceration (Schmitt). A reduction by one-half in the incarceration rate of nonviolent offenders would lower correctional expenditures by nearly $17 billion per year (Schmitt). The large majority of these savings would benefit the financially squeezed state and local governments. Moreover, state governments contribute about 60 percent, local governments account for around 30 percent, and the federal government contributes the remaining 10 percent towards the national corrections expenses (Schmitt). These overwhelming costs beg the question: Are public funds best spent incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders, or would they be better spent on public safety priorities by incarcerating fewer nonviolent criminals and spending more on education and policing? (Kearney). Because our society is fixated on incarceration, the root of the problem is often ignored. Contrary, the root of the problem must be addressed through focusing on prevention and treatment methods; therefore, the financial burden on our society would diminish. Currently, the societal costs of incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders exceed the benefits. The per capita expenditures on corrections more than tripled between 1980 and 2010, going from an average of $77
Not everyone loves the ideas of alternatives to prison because alternatives to prison seem to work only when there is a limited number of cases that adhere to the sentence, However, when places like California is spending more money on their prison systems than on actual education, alternatives to prison seem to be the best choice (David, 2006).
Zhang, S. X., Roberts, R. E. L., & Callanan, V. J. (2006). Preventing parolees from returning to prison through community-based reintegration. Crime & Delinquency, 52(4), 551-571.
In the United States of America’s criminal justice system, both violent and non-violent offenders are imprisoned. This imprisonment has led to overpopulation of our prisons, both federal and state-owned. Overpopulation and overcrowding can cause stress on the average, everyday tax-paying citizen as it becomes very expensive to house the over one-hundred and fifty thousand sentenced prisoners each year (US Bureau of Justice Statistics). That number adds up, because even with the over six hundred thousand offenders released each year, there are even more that remain in the prison system (US Bureau of Justice Statistics). The total number of prisoners in the U.S. state and federal correctional facilities, which includes prisons, rehabilitation centers, and juvenile detention centers, is 1,574,700 (US Bureau of Justice Statistics). This cycle of overpopulation needs a long-term fix, not some cookie-cutter solution that will only alleviate the problem temporarily. Due to the
Nieto, M. (1996). Community corrections punishments: An alternative to incarceration for non-violent offenders. Retrieved March 13, 2011, from http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/96/08/
It was this effort that identified the problem as failures of the judicial process. These failures included sluggish courts, increased levels of recidivism, and a significant loss of public trust (Ballenstedt, 2008). To solve the problem, the program takes a multifaceted approach to punishment in non-violent cases. Through the program, justices have more options available to them when sentencing such offenses as drug possession, prostitution, or even shoplifting. The concept combines social services with punishment in order to reduce reliance on expensive and ineffective short-term jail sentences for non-violent offenders and boost the community’s confidence in the system (Ballenstedt, 2008).
This model of corrections main purpose was to reintroducing the offenders in to the community. This Program was invented to help offenders in the transition from jail to the community, aid in the processes of finding jobs and stay connected to their families and the community. The needs of these individuals are difficult: the frequency of substance abuse, mental illness, unemployment, and homelessness is elevated among the jail population.
With the substantial increase in prison population and various changes that plague correctional institutions, government agencies are finding that what was once considered a difficult task to provide educational programs, inmate security and rehabilitation programs are now impossible to accomplish. From state to state, each correctional organization is coupled with financial problems that have depleted the resources to assist in providing the quality of care in which the judicial system demands from these state and federal prisons. Judges, victims, and prosecuting attorneys entrust that once an offender is turned over to the correctional system, that the offender will receive the punishment imposed by the court, be given services that aid in the rehabilitation of those offenders that one day will be released back into society, and to act as a deterrent to other criminals contemplating criminal acts that could result in their incarceration. Has our nation’s correctional system finally reached it’s critical collapse, and as a result placed American citizens in harm’s way to what could result in a plethora of early releases of inmates to reduce the large prison populations in which independent facilities are no longer able to manage? Could these problems ultimately result in a drastic increase in person and property crimes in which even our own law enforcement is ineffective in controlling these colossal increases in crime against society?
All over America, crime is on the rise. Every day, every minute, and even every second someone will commit a crime. Now, I invite you to consider that a crime is taking place as you read this paper. "The fraction of the population in the State and Federal prison has increased in every single year for the last 34 years and the rate for imprisonment today is now five times higher than in 1972"(Russell, 2009). Considering that rate along crime is a serious act. These crimes range from robbery, rape, kidnapping, identity theft, abuse, trafficking, assault, and murder. Crime is a major social problem in the United States. While the correctional system was designed to protect society from offenders it also serves two specific functions. First it can serve as a tool for punishing the offender. This involves making the offender pay for his/her crime while serving time in a correctional facility. On the other hand it can serve as a place to rehabilitate the offender as preparation to be successful as they renter society. The U.S correctional system is a quite controversial subject that leads to questions such as how does our correctional system punish offenders? How does our correctional system rehabilitate offenders? Which method is more effective in reducing crime punishment or rehabilitation? Our correctional system has several ways to punish and rehabilitate offenders.