CJ 220 Chapter 4 Corrections and Community Justice © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Introduction Compared to law enforcement and the courts, the correctional function has been a latecomer to community justice Correctional operations are generally grouped into two types: Institutional corrections Field services corrections © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Introduction Institutional corrections encompass jails, prisons, and federal penitentiaries Field services corrections usually encompass probation and parole The most commonly used forms of corrections occur in the community (probation, parole, and community corrections) and these aspects of correctional activity would seem to be naturally related to the ideals of community justice © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Traditional Correctional Services Offender management In traditional corrections, the technical core is developed to manage offenders through the process of criminal sanctions Correctional workers are held accountable for the way they deal with individual offenders The offender-management theme determines the level of focus of correctional attention to be brought on the individual offender, not the community, the victim, or the system © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Traditional Correctional Services Under correctional authority, offenders are processed through stages of correctional work – pretrial, post-conviction, and community re-entry The meaning of corrections is operationalized by the way each of its clients is dealt with by correctional staff © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Traditional Correctional Services Risk The central concern correctional officials emphasize in managing offenders is their risk High risk offenders are treated one-way – managed with care and with an emphasis on control Low risk offenders are dealt with in another – given less restriction and controls Average risk cases fall in the middle © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Traditional Correctional Services Risk level may change if the offender demonstrates through behavior that risk is less than what close control requires Risk permeates correctional thinking It is seen as unwise to underestimate risk, and correctional officers are encouraged to treat any indicator as important © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Traditional Correctional Services Treatment Almost all offenders have significant personal problems that, left unchanged, bode poorly for subsequent adjustment to community life after correctional authority ends Drug abuse, poor impulse control, lack of job skills, educational deficits, and so on Unfortunately, the success of correctional treatment programming is notoriously poor © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Traditional Correctional Services Even the best treatment programs work only for some of the clients, and all treatment programs have some failure There is no “silver bullet” in correctional rehabilitation Treatment programming poses an inherent dilemma for corrections: the treatments are all going to have failures, and if they are applied correctly (to high-risk cases) to start with, they will have a larger number of failures overall © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Surveillance and Control Traditional correctional programs have a basic concern for the safety of the community This implies the need for a minimum level of surveillance and control and suggests that a program failures mount and as risk levels of clients get higher, the need for surveillance and control increases Institutional corrections offices do counts and community corrections workers employ home visits and drug testing © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Surveillance and Control New technologies have improved surveillance capacities It is not possible to watch every offender all of the time, but it is possible to give greater emphasis to watching particular offenders more closely, especially those of high risk or those who have complicated or significant treatment needs © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Surveillance and Control Punishment If there is anything citizens expect from corrections, it is that offenders will be sanctioned for their misconduct First, it assumed that the correctional worker will ensure that the punishment imposed by the judge will be carried out Second, when the offenders fail to conform to the rules of the correctional programming, there will be unpleasant consequences that will cause the recalcitrant to rethink his errant ways Some observers consider punishment as the most important function of corrections © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Correctional Community Justice The most significant difference between the traditional view of corrections and community justice is that community justice seems to align itself with and build capacity of informal social controls at the community level The formal social controls are seen as of secondary importance in building a safer society than the informal social control of families, personal associations, social organizations, and the private sector PARADE Magazine | Why We Must Fix Our Prisons © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Correctional Community Justice Neighborhoods and Communities Under a community justice model, corrections maintains a focus on neighborhoods and local communities The importance of neighborhood and community is straightforward for correctional functions that operate when the offender is residing in the community, such as probation and parole © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Correctional Community Justice But the neighborhood connection also applies to the institutional correctional function Criminologists agree that informal social controls for the basis for public safety in community life: the capacity of a community to achieve a degree of public safety through collective efficacy Without strong, broad networks, there is little collective efficacy © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Correctional Community Justice Every time an offender is removed from the community for incarceration, those networks are affected High rates of incarceration can become significant forces in the capacity of social networks in these communities to perform their public safety functions These issues concern not only how an offender is behaving, but also how that offender’s situation – in or out of prison – affects the people who are not under correctional authority © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Correctional Community Justice Partnerships Those organizations responsible for a special set of objectives, such as public safety, partner with other organizations to carry out their function The reasons for partnerships are fairly simple: the problems of community life are so complex and so interconnected that working on one set of issues in isolation from others is not likely to produce much change © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Correctional Community Justice The most common correctional partnerships are formed with other criminal justice organizations, particularly the police Non-criminal justice agencies also stand as good partners Overall, partnerships with nonjustice agencies are designed to encourage “seamless” service systems in which comprehensive strategies are concentrated in communities whose residents suffer from significant deficits Community justice strategies also seek private-sector partners © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Correctional Community Justice Victims and communities Unlike traditional justice services, community justice initiatives concern themselves with clients other than the offender under direct correctional supervision because the community justice agenda accepts responsibilities that go beyond the management of the offender Community justice embraces the interests of victims and communities directly The problems victims encounter as a result of the crime and the difficulties encountered by communities resulting from the removal and return of resident offenders are made a part of the community justice agenda © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Correctional Community Justice Problem solving Community justice is a problem solving philosophy The orientation contrasts with traditional criminal justice, which is adversarial One of the reason partnerships are so important to community justice is that problem solving is so important © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Themes in Correctional Community Justice Restoration To some extent, every solution to the problem of crime involves some level of restoration because crime is destructive to society This dual level of loss – tangible and social – suggests that restoration has two aims One aim is to repair the losses suffered by the victims of crime and is accomplished by restitution The social damage of crime can be ameliorated only through social reparation © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Integrating Traditional Correctional Thought into the Community Justice Framework The traditional concerns of corrections do not disappear under community justice, they are incorporated into the community justice priorities The most important of these priorities is the neighborhood and community focus of community justice © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Integrating Traditional Correctional Thought into the Community Justice Framework Offender management becomes community focused The question is how best to reintegrate offenders back into the community This tend to fall on probation and parole, but it also has implications for institutional corrections In working with those in the offender’s social network, community justice workers must bear in mind the risk the offender represents to people in that network and to others in the community A challenge is to balance the risk with the need to establish supports and interdependencies that are vulnerable to that risk © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Integrating Traditional Correctional Thought into the Community Justice Framework The two most significant ways that community justice workers ensure progress toward reintegration is through the combined strategies of treatment programs and problem solving efforts Treatment programs control and reduce risk Problem solving strategies identify ways that risk may be overcome through new offender and community approaches © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Integrating Traditional Correctional Thought into the Community Justice Framework Both punishment and surveillance and control are aspects of community justice, but they are used as tools to achieve reintegration rather than as ends in themselves In a community orientation, the traditional concerns of corrections remain but they are subverted to the concerns of community justice © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Integrating Traditional Correctional Thought into the Community Justice Framework The question posed to assess the value of particular actions is not directed mainly at the offender but instead is focused on the question of the community quality of life Will this strategy help strengthen the community and the offender’s circumstances within it? © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions There are two main locations for corrections: the community and the institution For each of these locations, traditional corrections has two types of functions Regarding the community there are probation and parole Regarding institutions there are jails and prisons © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Community justice and probation Probation (along with parole) involves community supervision, meaning that its operations occur in the community, and its clients reside in the community Traditional probation has not realized a community justice orientation They tend to use “Fortress Probation” in which offices are located near the courthouse and clients are expected to come there. Also, few home or community visits © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Critics of Fortress Probation argue that the reactive style of this method does not prevent problems, it just manages them Under a community justice model, probation moves out of the office into branch offices in the neighborhoods where the majority of the clients live Being in the field allows probation officers to monitor not only the offenders’ behavior, but also the informal social control mechanisms which have the biggest influence on their success © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Informal social controls are the prosocial relationships that strengthen an offender’s connection to a conventional lifestyle Family members Employers Associates Community organizations A neighborhood-based probation system concerns itself not only with the offender but also others in the neighborhood who might play a role in the offender’s adjustment © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Community justice probation seeks ways to establish support systems in the community for probationers For most probationers, the key target for community justice probation is the family Community justice probation is also concerned about victims of crime, as they are also residents of the community The community is also a victim of crime and offenders can be expected to make some form of restitution to the community, not just to the specific victim Usually in the form of community service © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions By locating in the neighborhood, community justice tailors its efforts to the particular neighborhood © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions When probation is used properly it can be very effective in providing sanctioning and rehabilitation to the offender One argument is that the criminal’s perceptions about deterrence matter for rehabilitation and retribution Although probation does not provide the same level of sanctioning as imprisonment, it does still allow for some incapacitation due to the supervision of a probation officer © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Applegate et al. believe that it is important whether probationers perceive probation as a punitive experience Their research with misdemeanant probationers found that a large number perceived the probation as a punitive experience and say that it will keep them from offending again © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Community justice and the jail Jails are important to the community They serve as temporary holding facilities prior to trials and incarcerate misdemeanants Three principles would seem to be important in the application of community justice to the jail Informal social control Transition planning Restoration/restitution © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Jails stays, no matter how brief, disrupt the offender’s life and can affect their informal social controls A community justice orientation to a jail will try to minimize these losses The important objective is to create the supports the inmate will need when released from custody Treatment for drug and alcohol abuse as well as anger management can be set up to continue after the release of the offender © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Transition planning is very important Jails can also play an important role in restoration and restitution Allowing inmates to work for income that partly goes toward a victims’ fund Trustee programs that allow the offender to perform restorative services in the community Inmate programs that benefit the community © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Community justice and the prison The typical prisoner is away from the community between two and three years Prisons can make the process of readjusting to the community easier An emphasis can be placed on facilitating the maintenance of family ties through visitation programs As the offender nears release, planning for transition can help create linkages to the community by involving family members, employers, and residents’ groups in the preparation for the transition © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions The point of any community justice initiative in prison is to reduce the isolation of prisons from community life © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Community justice and parole Studies show that the rate of crime in a given community is associated with the number of prisoners returning to that community Community justice in parole can operate in the same manner as it does in probation with neighborhood centers It is important that there is participation in the transition planning process © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Community corrections and restoration One of the values that sets community justice apart from traditional criminal justice is a concern for restoration Doing something about the damage that results from crime is an essential part of community justice Community justice approaches restorative justice as problem solving Community justice conceptualizes a criminal case not as a contest between two disputants, but a problem between three parties: offender, victim, community © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Restorative justice gives both the community and the victim an active role in determining the appropriate sanction in a case, and it gives the offender a voice in that same process © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Women in prison Rate of imprisonment for women has been greater than that of men Women incarcerated for a variety of reasons, but it is often because of a boyfriend or significant other who uses them to assist in criminal behavior © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora How Community Justice Changes the Traditional Correctional Functions Women face different adjustment issues when returning to society from imprisonment Since this is the case, treatment programs should be revised to address women’s issues and challenges holistically with attention toward factors that drive women into substance abuse © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora Community Justice Centers The center serves as a resource both for residents being supervised by corrections agencies and for families, victims of crime, and other residents in need of assistance Community guardianship Civic leadership Workforce development Supportive health care and housing © 2011 Todd R. Clear, John R. Hamilton, Jr and Eric Cadora