Community Based Corrections

Community Based Corrections

Introduction

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 (Fox, 1977).

Types of Community Corrections Programs

Community corrections have developed as an alternative to incarceration and field supervision in recent 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 (Perlstein, and Phelps, eds. 1975).

Goals of Community Corrections

Goals of community corrections include Probation and parole which is responsible for the supervision of more than 5 million adult offenders in the United States. As the most common disposition in the ...