Chapter 5
Intermediate
Sanctions
Intermediate Sanctions
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Alternatives to incarceration
Operated by probation/parole agencies
No need to create new bureaucracies
More punitive than traditional community
supervision
• Most are cheaper than imprisonment
• Community-based treatment more effective
Logic of Intermediate Sanctions
1) Increase incapacitation, retribution, deterrence
2) Increase offenders’ sense of responsibility via
demands for employment, self-discipline
3) More treatment and educational resources
available in community – higher success rates
4) Restitution more easily provided
5) Avoid the negative influences of the prison
6) Less cost; more space for serious offenders
Graduated Sanctions
• Punishment/intrusiveness of community
supervision increased slowly if offender
fails to cooperate
• Reduces recidivism, revocation, at least
among drug offenders
• Increasingly popular
Types of Sanctions
Limited only by official creativity, initiative
Front door: Prior to prison
Back door: Early release from prison
• Restitution/community xervice
• Intensive supervision
• Home confinement/electronic monitoring
• Ignition interlock systems
Types of Sanctions (continued)
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Day reporting centers
Transitional facilities
Split sentences
Correctional bootcamps
Therapeutic communities
– The only alternative sanction oriented
primarily to “treatment”
Restitution and
Community Service
• Required for over 30% of probationers
– Most common alternative sanction
• Repopularized by victims, restorative
justice
• Can be combined with mediation
• Restitution centers: semi–secure
dormitories with transportation to job sites
• Community service used when society is
victim
Perpetual Incarceration Machine
• Increased emphasis on fees, fines,
restitution
• Popular demands for retribution
• Dominance of new penology’s cost-efficient
orientation
• Increases frustration, failure among
impoverished offenders
Intensive Supervision Programs
(ISPs)
• Designed for high-risk offenders
• 2–4 times more monthly contacts with
parole officer
• Increases revocation/recidivism rates
through greater scrutiny
• Most effective when combined with
intensive counseling
• Usually employed for punishment, public
safety
Home Confinement and
Electronic Monitoring
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Technology enforces strict curfew
Work, therapy, basic errands only
No adverse impacts on mental health
Weekly schedule approved by officer
Monitoring usually via phone by private
contractor
• Quality varies with contractor, client
selection
Ignition Interlock Systems
• Used with drunk driving offenders
• Checks alcohol content of breath before car
can be started
• Random checks after car is put in gear with
some units
• Usually supplied by private contractors
• Usually paid for by offender
Day Reporting Centers
• Structured, monitored environment for
unemployed offenders
• Service (job counselors, educators,
therapists) visit or work at center
• Offenders leave only for medical care,
job interviews
• Use limited by location problems
Transitional Facilities
• Halfway Houses
– Non-secure facility
– Living quarters and use of phone
• Work Release Centers
– Less secure than minimum security
prison
• Both provide control intermediate
between prison and parole
Split Sentences or Shock
Probation
• Brief incarceration followed intensive
supervision in community
• Seeks deterrence without adverse effects of
imprisonment
• Costly, little impact on recidivism
• Often utilize bootcamps
Correctional Boot Camps
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Modeled on military, stress discipline
Success → ISP
Failure → Prison
Popular with public and politicians
No effect on recidivism unless treatment
emphasis is added
• Costlier than prison
• Many problems with physical, sexual abuse
Therapeutic Communities
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Residential treatment facilities
Intensive, use variety of therapies
Most common for drug/alcohol offenders
High drop-out rate but recidivism rare
among graduates
• Length of treatment critical to success rate
• Costs roughly equal prison but stay often
shorter
Effectiveness of
Intermediate Sanctions
• Each sanction addresses different goals
• Cost efficiency requires use with offenders
who would otherwise be imprisoned
• Most common use is to make community
supervision more punitive
• This addresses demands for greater
retribution but is not cost efficient
Dangers of
Intermediate Sanctions
• Growing “culture of surveillance”
– Americans already the most closely monitored
people in world
• Expanding the net of social control
– The easier it is to supervise people, the more
people placed under supervision
– A financial and moral issue
Dangers (continued)
• Discriminatory use
– Net widening impacts least powerful
– Wealthy more able to avoid prison
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Control enhanced at expense of treatment
Impact on third parties
Risk reduction versus cost management
Opportunity costs: would resources be
better used in other ways?