Posted: May 9th, 2022

Community Corrections and Recidivism

Community Corrections and Recidivism
The rate of recidivism has consistently increased in the United States thus raising different question on the effectiveness of the correctional system in attaining the goals of the criminal justice system in regard to the convicted parties and thus there is need to understand the relationship between correctional system and recidivism to enhance the adoption of the best practices and approached to ensure recidivism is effectively reduced. Recidivism in criminal justice entails the tendency of a person to relapse into criminal tendencies after they are freed from correctional facilities or after they receive sanctions or go an intervention for their different crimes. According to research conducted by the Pew Center in 2011 indicated that the rate of recidivism stood at 43% while the National Institute of Justice indicated that 44% of convicted people released find their way back to the jail before the end of the year they are released. Additionally, a report by the Sentencing Commission indicated that the rate of recidivism for the federal prisoners had risen to 64% as of January 2019. The high rates of recidivism indicate that the correctional systems are not effective in rehabilitation and reintegration of former convicts, and thus there is a need to establish the underlying factors that contribute to the high recidivism rates. The understanding of the high recidivism rates in relation to the correctional can be understood through the evaluation of the different areas such as goals of a community sentence, correctional programs in community corrections, the advantages and disadvantages of the community correction system, financial and social cost associated community corrections and enable the evaluation on the effectiveness of community corrections system. Society has consistently experienced high levels of recidivism from individuals released from community correctional facilities, and thus there is a need to evaluate the cause of recidivism by gathering knowledge from the operations aspects of the community correctional system.
Goals of community sentence
Community sentencing is tasked with different goals in the criminal justice system in relation to handling and managing convicts in the interest of common good. First, community correctional facilities are established with the goals of easing the federal correctional crowding and costs. Federal facilities are consistently filled with prisoners, and they become crowded, but the idea of building more jails and prison is not an option since such endeavors are costly (Taylor, 2014). In this regard, the government is inclined to adopt the community correctional system to reduce crowding. It is vital to note that there are legal limits that define the number of prisoners that can be held in different correctional facilities, and thus the government uses the community correctional facilities to handle excess prisoners. Therefore, the goal of the community correctional system is to preventing crowding through receiving excess prisoners from federal and state correctional facilities.
Community correctional facilities serve the purpose of surveillance to enhance a supervision program for public safety. The community corrections enhance the supervisions and assessment of offenders to determine the degree of risk they pose to society in the interest of public safety (Taylor, 2014). It is vital to note that offenders pose a serious threat to the public, and thus they have to be assessed to ensure that they are fit to go back to society once their jail terms end. Therefore, community correctional facilities ensure that offenders are supervised to ensure that they will uphold public safety once they are integrated into their communities.
The community correctional system is tasked with enhancing the re-entry of an offender into the community. Community reintegration is a goal that is made possible by the community’s correctional facilities by laying the necessary steps towards re-entry into the community (Taylor, 2014). In this regard, the offenders are consistently are enabled to adapt and assume their former roles, and responsibilities such as parental responsibilities. This approach ensures that released prisoners are not subjected to culture shock, thus enhancing community reintegration.
The community correctional system enhances the restorative justice by ensuring that the offender gets to reasonably pay their victims or enhance restitution on the part of the victims of crime. In some cases, the victims of crimes argue that they need to be paid back and have things restored to their former condition, and thus the community corrections enhance the attainment of restorative justice (Taylor, 2014). The community corrections enhance restorative justice between the victims and offender through mediation sessions, volunteer mentoring, victim impact panels, while the victim remains in the community and they completes their community service and settles the victim restitution. Therefore, community correction ensures that restorative justice is achieved, thus ensuring that the victims are sufficiently paid and served in the interest of justice, fairness, and equality.
Community correction programs
The offender is subjected to different community correctional system programs before conviction, at the sentencing, and at the re-entry level. The community corrections programs before conviction include pretrial supervision and electronic monitoring and house arrest. The pretrial supervision program entails that the defendant is released and effectively supervised before the following court date (Gunter and Philibert, 2015). The form of supervision ensures that the defendant can work and live as a productive citizen until they appear in court again. On the other hand, there is the electronic monitoring, and house arrest is a supervision program before or after the conviction that monitors the defendant or the offender from their different locations.
The community correctional programs at sentencing include probation supervision, day reporting centers, community drug treatment programs, community service, restitution, and fines programs. The probation supervision entails that the offender is effectively supervised under court-imposed conditions, and their compliance is evaluated (Zondi, 2012). Day reporting centers entail the defendant reporting to specific centers at predetermined times for checking in or participating in class. The programs are held to enhance treatment or other services. Community drug treatment programs ensure that offenders that use drug or alcohol are treated to ensure that they can work and operate independently without being dependent on drugs. Community service program ensures that court-ordered community services for the offenders are done where offenders engage in unpaid labor for the common good. Restitution programs ensure that victims are reasonably paid for the crime committed by the offender.
The community correction programs at the re-entry level include the pre-release facility, parole, and post-release supervision programs. The pre-release facility program ensures that former offenders are subjected to minimum security residential facility where they can live and work while being supervised by authorities (Zondi, 2012). On the other hand, The parole program entails the offender being released before the expiration of their sentence by a parole board after they have participated in the rehabilitative programs and can be effectively be reintegrated in the community. These programs take the community correction supervising the offender to ensure that they consistently become law-abiding citizens while on parole.

Advantages and disadvantages of community correctional system
The community correctional system has both advantages and disadvantages in the course of offender handling and management. Community correctional has various advantages that ensure that offenders are effectively managed in the interest of common good (Shun’an, 2005). The use of a community correctional system is cost-effective as compared to running a jail or a prison. In this case, the offenders live at home as compared to the jails and prisons where offenders live in federal or state facilities. Offenders continue to live and work; thus, they support themselves and families as well as pay taxes and wages.
Community correctional systems ease jail and prison crowding by enabling the offenders to complete the boot camp, drug program, and other related correctional programs while in community correctional facilities (Shun’an, 2005). This approach ensures that cost is saved, and federal and state correctional facilities maintain their legal limit of prisoners.
The community correction programs are flexible, and they can thus be offered at different points in the course of the criminal justice process. Community punishments enhance mandatory treatments and reduce the freedom of the offenders. The pretrial release enhances the avoidance of conviction as well as enhancing the re-entry process.
On the disadvantages, is that the adoption of community correctional system compromises public safety (Shun’an, 2005). The offenders have the capability of continuing with their criminal behavior as opposed to the cases they were confined in prison. The correctional facility cannot sufficiently supervise each offender, thus making them be involved in crimes.
Finally, the community supervision programs are disconnected from other treatment services to handle other severe issues faced by the offenders. This fact makes it impossible to attend to the prisoners as there are barriers such as the inability to miss work and transportation problems.
Community corrections financial and social costs
Community corrections are faced with social and financial costs that render different operations impossible. The financial costs arising from taxpayers’ money are spent in running the day to day operations at different centers. Therefore, public money is used in managing offenders as opposed to being used in developmental and growth operations. On the other hand, social costs arise as offenders or persons considered to be criminals are allowed to be in the society as opposed to being incarcerated, thus compromising public safety.
Effectiveness of community correction system
The effectiveness of the community correction system is in question due to the high levels of recidivism. The community correction system is thus praised and criticized in equal measures. First, the community correctional programs are scientifically evaluated, thus indicating their effectiveness in handling and managing offenders. For instance, some programs have been certified to be very successful such as faith-based mentoring and other drug-related programs. Therefore, the different programs have different levels of success, thus determining the effectiveness of the community correctional system. On the other hand, there are other programs that have become ineffective by increasing the rate of recidivism, such as house arrests, boot camps, parole supervision, and routine probation.

Conclusion
The levels of recidivism have consistently increased, and thus there is a need to evaluate the effectiveness of the community correctional programs, thus enhancing the adoption of the necessary strategies to reduce recidivism. The effectiveness of community correctional programs is dependent on the different community programs run under the system. In this regard, all the programs need to be improved and advanced in the interest of common good or meeting the community correctional system goals.

References
Gunter, T. D., & Philibert, R. A. (2015). Smoking, methylation at AHRR, and recidivism risk in a community correction sample of individuals at high risk for recidivism. Behavioral sciences & the law, 33(5), 691-700.
Shun’an, W. (2005). The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Community Correction
Taylor, J. (2014). A deliberative inquiry to evaluate and progress a community sentence work order project. SAGE Publications, Ltd..
Zondi, C. Z. (2012). Community participation in community correction operation and offender re-integration. International Journal for Cross-Disciplinary Subjects in Education, 3(3), 763-771.

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Tags: Community Corrections and Recidivism