EFFECTIVENESS OF COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS

Effectiveness of community corrections

Effectiveness of community corrections

Purpose and effectiveness of community corrections

Community corrections have developed as an alternative to incarceration and field supervision over the last three years. This development has taken two forms, diversion and transitional. Both programs are primarily residential in nature. The diversion programs are available to the sentencing court as a placement more secure than probation, to be used in lieu of incarceration. The client is placed in a residential home setting, which has twenty-four hour coverage, and staff who are to provide in-house counseling and referral services. This placement lasts an average of three to four months, and the client is then released on probation.

Transitional programs are the same in concept; the difference is the population served. Transitional facilities are used for persons coming out of institutions, to aid in reintegration into the community. They have the same staffing capabilities as do the diversion programs. The purpose of transitional placements is also to provide a secure setting in the community, allowing for a decrease in the length of time spent in incarceration.

In that most community corrections, staff feeling that their main function is that of obtaining employment, and increasing the strength of conventional social ties. It appears that the most reasonable theoretical approach is that of control theory with the notion of differential association added.

Probation and parole

Probation and parole is responsible for the supervision of more than 5 million adult offenders in the United States. As the most common disposition in the United States for felony convictions, probation is a sentence in lieu of incarceration that monitors people under conditions of release. The two types of probation conditions are mandatory and special. Mandatory conditions are defined by state or federal statutes and applied to every sentenced to probation.

These conditions ...