Community-based corrections

SIGNIFICANCE: Community-based corrections are alternatives to incarceration and are increasingly and innovatively being used by judges and corrections administrators to alleviate prison and jail overcrowding.

An array of community-based correctional strategies is in use, but this was not always the case. Around the time of the American Revolutionary War, offenders were routinely punished in their local communities, with public humiliation as the goal. Criminals, for example, were placed in stocks and forced to endure thrown garbage and insults while they were, literally, on display in the town square. Such punishments aimed to deter would-be offenders and provided obvious retribution for wrongdoing. These early humiliating punishments, however, did not aim to reintegrate the offender.

Over time, penal reformers argued that rehabilitation should also be an objective of punishment and that offenders could be corrected within their communities. By the mid-nineteenth century, some offenders were placed on probation and parole, the earliest attempts at their correction outside an institution. Until the late 1950s, these were the only widely employed community-corrections strategies. During the 1960s and 1970s, increased interest and support for the idea of correction in the community led to the proliferation of work-release programs, halfway houses, substance-abuse centers, and other community-based corrections. By the 1980s, support for rehabilitation and community-based corrections had decreased; the number of offenders removed from society via incarceration grew. Prison and jail populations skyrocketed. Consequently, alternatives to incarceration are now sought, if only to alleviate prison overcrowding.

Probation and Parole

Probation and parole began to be used in the United States during the nineteenth century. Adult probation originated in Boston in 1841, through the work of John Augustus, an influential business owner. As a sentence, probation allows convicted offenders to remain in their communities, under supervision and with specified conditions. Liberty is, therefore, conditional. The conditions of probation quite often focus on an offender’s rehabilitative needs. For example, an offender with substance-abuse problems will likely be required to attend Narcotics Anonymous or other appropriate meetings.

Unlike probation, parole is not a sentence. A parole board, rather than a judge, decides whether an offender may soon rejoin society. If the decision is favorable, an inmate is granted early release from the prison system. Therefore, all parolees have recently been incarcerated. New York, through its adoption of an indeterminate sentencing law in 1876, was the first state to allow prisoners to be released on parole.

The aim of parole, like that of all community-based corrections, is to assist with an offender’s reintegration. Like a probationer, a parolee is supervised while in the outside community and must abide by conditions of release. For both probationers and parolees, failure to abide by the conditions specified for release may result in reimprisonment.

The Mid-Twentieth Century

From the late-1950s to the late-1970s, the scope of community-based corrections expanded beyond probation and parole. Penal reformers argued that released inmates faced many problems as they made the transition from imprisonment to life back in the community. To combat the challenges former inmates faced, organizations such as the International Halfway House Association (now known as the International Association of Residential and Community Alternatives) and the American Correctional Association were instrumental in increasing the resources available for community-based corrections, and some were secured through legislation. For example, the Federal Prisoner Rehabilitation Act of 1965 authorized the establishment of halfway houses for both juveniles and adults. Largely because of these efforts, from 1966 to 1982 the number of halfway houses operating in the United States and Canada increased from fewer than fifty to more than fifteen hundred. The aim of halfway houses, both then and now, is to assist with an offender’s successful reintegration back into society. Some halfway houses also provide in-house rehabilitation, which may include job skills training, substance-abuse treatment, or mental health counseling.

The number of inmates granted temporary release from prisons and jails also grew notably. In 1957, for example, North Carolina became the first state to permit selected convicted felons to leave prisons during the day to work in the local community. Other states followed suit. The U.S. Congress, in 1965, allowed work release for prisoners in federal institutions. Authorization for other temporary-release programs, such as furlough release and study release, also became more widespread. The aim of all temporary-release programs is to promote offenders’ positive ties to society by allowing them to maintain regular societal interaction.

The 1980s and Beyond

Belief in the value of rehabilitation waned in the 1980s. Critics argued that high recidivism rates were indicative of a correctional system that was not working, suggesting that “correction” was not possible. Consequently, deterrence, retribution, and incapacitation became the primary justifications for punishment. With this came an increased likelihood of incarceration for an offender.

By 2010, the rate of incarceration was at an all-time high, having increased 700 percent since 1970. Prisons and jails in many jurisdictions across the United States remained severely overcrowded. One method of reducing overcrowding is to sentence offenders to something other than incarceration. Intermediate sanctions, which are simply punishments that are more severe than probation but less severe than incarceration, provide an alternative.

Use of most intermediate sanctions originated in the 1980s or 1990s. For example, Georgia became the first state to implement intensive supervised probation (ISP), in 1982, and widely to use correctional boot camps, in 1983. Both were done, in part, to avoid a federal takeover of its overcrowded prison system. New Jersey and Massachusetts also began utilizing ISP during the early 1980s.

The use of house arrest, with or without electronic monitoring, has also spread rapidly. In 1984, Florida was the first state extensively to use the sanction of home confinement. For many offenders, this punishment is the last chance to avoid incarceration in jail or prison. As technology has advanced, more and more jurisdictions have added electronic monitoring into their repertoire of punishment options. During the COVID-19 global pandemic, which began in the United States in 2020, the US Department of Justice advocated for use of home confinement to reduce infections in prison populations.

Day-reporting centers are among the newer intermediate sanctions. In 1990, only thirteen day-reporting centers existed in the United States. By the early 2000s, most major jurisdictions had at least one center to which offenders are sentenced to report on a daily basis. At the center, where offenders may spend up to eight hours of their days, focus is placed on an offender’s rehabilitation needs. Over time, expectations are that intermediate sanctions will increasingly be used.

Bibliography

Abadinsky, Howard. Probation and Parole. 12th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2015. Print.

Allen, Harry E., Clifford E. Simonsen, and Edward J. Latessa. Corrections in America: An Introduction. 14th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2016. Print.

Clear, Todd R., and Harry R. Dammer. The Offender in the Community. 2nd ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2003. Print.

Haas, Kenneth C., and Geoffrey P. Alpert. The Dilemmas of Corrections. 4th ed. Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1999. Print.

"Home Confinement Under the CARES Act." US Bureau of Prisons, 5 Apr. 2023, www.bop.gov/resources/news/20230405‗home‗confinement‗under‗the‗cares‗act.jsp. Accessed 24 June 2024.

Kaeble, Danielle. "Probation and Parole in the United States, 2021." Bureau of Justice Statistics, 23 Feb. 2023, bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/probation-and-parole-united-states-2021. Accessed 24 June 2024.

Stohr, Mary K., and Craig Hemmens. The Inmate Prison Experience. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2004. Print.

Vera Institute of Justice. The Potential of Community Corrections: To Improve Communities and Reduce Incarceration. New York: Vera Inst. of Justice, 2013. PDF file.