Essay On Community Corrections

Community corrections play a major role in the U.S. criminal justice system; and it attempts to provide an alternative to institutional corrections, which is mutually more beneficial to the State, the offender, his family, as well as the community. Its mission is to deliver services that contribute to safer communities all while reducing the hassles that the families’ of the offender, the State (in form of considerable expenditures associated), as well as the community face due to institutional corrections. Unlike many other facets of correctional-based sanctions, community based alternatives to institutional corrections are the best suited to minimize the “penetration” of offenders into the “system.” The main goals and objectives of community corrections are to reduce prison populations, protect the public, keep offenders (although under supervision) in community, reduce offender recidivism, generate cost savings and ensure community safety by rehabilitating offenders from prison which helps to break the …show more content…
Community corrections programs punish offenders not only by subjecting them to supervision and monitoring their activities, but also by using an array of graduated sanctions or punishments that correspond to violations of the rules and conditions of their sentences. Community corrections staff have the ability to impose additional restrictions on offenders if their behavior warrants it, or if offenders fail to conform to the expectations of their sanctions. Additionally, offenders placed in community-based correction programs are likely incapacitated to some degree by virtue of their supervision and monitoring of their behaviors by the community corrections officials and staff. This monitoring tends to result in a reduction in offending by these individuals as they realize that their behavior is being observed and violations will be