The Effectiveness Of Community Corections To Prison Reentry

ABSTRACT

A community-based correction is, then, one of the most controversial components of the American criminal justice system. Fears of increasing urban crime, concerns about the costs of prisons and reformatories, and the general fiscal crisis of the federal and state governments, together with “advances” in technology (electronic monitoring), do not bode well for the future. America's cities are becoming community prisons for urban, black males and other minorities—a disconcerting trend and a troubling commentary on our society. This paper will review the effectiveness of community corections to prison reentry in a holistic context.

Introduction

The term, community corrections, describes programs that provide alternatives to the incarceration of offenders in state prisons. These alternatives often include activities located in the same areas in which offenders live and work. Community corrections options are designed to consider both the safety of the local residents as well as the treatment and rehabilitation needs of the offender (Burke, 2012).

Types of Programs

Community-based corrections

Community-based corrections includes a wide range of programs aimed at avoiding incarcerating criminals in county penitentiaries, prisons, juvenile reformatories, and reformatory-prisons. Probation, parole, halfway houses (for adults), group homes (for children), work release, study release, and furloughs are the traditional forms of community-based corrections, although some criminologists and penologists employ a wider definition and also include community service, fines (paid to the state), restitution (paid to the victim), shock incarceration (incarceration followed by probation), and the American correctional system's latest innovation, house arrest and electronic monitoring (Bartruff, 2011).

Even though research on the history of American corrections and social control has increased in recent years, the development of community-based corrections has received relatively little attention. It is known, however, that fines and restitution are not American innovations and have been used in Asia and Europe for thousands of years. Halfway houses and group homes developed in the United States in the late nineteenth century, and work release was astarted in Wisconsin in 1913. Historians generally trace furloughs and study release to the 1960s, shock incarceration to the 1970s, and electronic monitoring to the 1980s (Morgan, 2011).

Treatment

As states adopted more formal community alternatives to incarceration, a broad range of treatments and services became available. In 2000, there were two major correctional populations under community supervision: those who were on probation instead of going to prison and those who were on parole or under a similar form of supervision after having completed time in prison (Burke, 2012).

Motivations of Community Corrections

Need for Community Corrections

The proliferation of community-based corrections in the 1960s and 1970s has had a profound influence on America's “criminal class.” In particular, the spread of community corrections, coupled with the Reagan administration's “get tough on crime” strategy, has greatly expanded the state's social-control network over the urban black community. Recent studies by Jerome Miller, for example, reveal that 30 percent of African-American men between the ages of 18 and 35 who lived in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1991 were on probation or parole; and 21 percent of the African-American men of the ...