ALTERNATIVES FOR COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS

Alternatives for Community Corrections

Alternatives for Community Corrections

Introduction

The study is related to the alternatives for community corrections, which focuses on alternative sanctions for non violent offenders. The mission of alternatives for community corrections is to collaborate with the community to support and assist individuals with a mental illness to obtain the highest quality of life as possible. 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 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 then released on probation. Transitional programs are the same in concept; the difference is the population served. Transitional facilities 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.Discussion

In relation to the alternatives for community corrections, the Community Corrections Program offers the judiciary a variety of programs for the non-violent offenders. Alternatives for community corrections help in saving the jail space in the adult detention center and permit the offenders to support their families, uphold their jobs and also make available compensation to the community and also to the crime victims. These services take account of collection of restitution payments, court cost, probation supervision and fines. Alternative corrections are to defer sentencing when possible with probation, parole, community service, and victim integrated rehabilitation. At the “front end” that is for the first time non-violent offenders community correction sanctions use the discretion of judiciaries to lessen sentencing with community service, fines, and / or court supervision or probation periods. At the back end of community corrections, similar programs used for offenders who are already serving sentences; including early release upon good behavior. These back end sanctions often result in parole or work release programs, which allow offenders who have served part of their sentence to be released only to work and report back to prison, or they may be released completely as long as they keep regular meetings with their parole officers, submit to drug testing, and hold employment (Barajas, 1995). In 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.Community Correction

Community correction means punishing offenders outside a secure environment but still provide a measure of supervision, also known as extra-institutional punishments, alternative sanctions, or intermediate sanctions. This includes programs such as probation (community supervision, by the Department of ...