What Is The Effectiveness Of Probation And Parole Effective?

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Throughout the years we have noticed a pattern in prisons. Cells are becoming overcrowded with the increase of crime. With this come budgetary problems. Many alternatives have been created to decrease overcrowding in prison. Many social agencies have and are still being used in replacement of jail time for criminals whose crime is not as extreme. The effectiveness of probation and parole can be extremely questionable. This paper will serve to convey the reasons why Probation and Parole is not effective. The question here is whether the lack of Probation and Parole staffing and its diversity and lack of specialization affects recidivism of offenders.
In the text “Creating a Supervision Tool Kit: How to Improve Probation and Parole” it is revealed that the lack of funds and growing number of offenders under community supervision has led to “ineffective supervision practices”. Probation and Parole Officers are given so much discretion that there are no clear guidelines as to how they should perform their jobs in order to prevent recidivism. Today officers have some idea of how to …show more content…

Crime is very predominant which means officers have many cases and offenders they must supervise. One can imagine how difficult it must be to keep an eye on one offender let alone 70 of them, which on average PO’s can have up to that many cases. As a result of this, Probation and Parole officers have been encouraged to get “tougher” on offenders in order to scare and hinder them from violation the rules of Probation. They believed this method to be less time consuming, as they would not have to heavily supervise each individual offender. This method however has proven to be ineffective at reducing recidivism (Gleicher, 2013). Being tough tends to backfire. If there were a substantial amount of officers available to supervise, this tactic would not need to be utilized as

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