Our corrections system has been conducted through several reformative and punitive models. From colonial, penitentiary, reformatory, progressive, medical, community, and crime control (due process model), we have grown and adjusted as society changes. No one model is truly unique, each model is rooted in its predecessors aspects, we use a jumble of them in the varying aspects of the system. While crime control is currently the official front-runner, community models are heavily represented too, despite heavy financial ties to their use.
Crime control models focus on ‘assembly line justice’, structured sentencing and more productive processing through the courts and punishment systems. Crimes/offenses are sorted into categories (nets), each one comes with a base sentence that has room for ‘personalization’, and most sentencing is uniform and formula based. What the offense is, how the sentence is served, previous convictions, all factor into what sentence adjustments are made and how long the sentence is for the offender. The room for personalization and adjustments is where community models still have a strong hold in society.
Community models focus on keeping the offender connected to the community, not severing their ties unless necessary. This means serving probation sentences with rehabilitation, reform, and community service requirements. There are assessments, therapies, punitive punishments, all meant to connect the offender with those they harmed in their offense, the community damage encored, and hopes to ‘drive home’ reform. Their retained popularity may have less to do with shown results and
more to do with the over crowded, under staffed courts and detention facilities, along with the boom in the privet sector of reform.
While many studies show that crime rates are lowering, the facilities in existence are over capacity across the board, some worse off than others. The lowering rates justify the political choices to not build more facilities, while the realities of the current population forces the system to get creative. Offenders are sentenced in assembly line fashion (crime control) to sentences that are often partially if not fully community based. If the offender is not completely released from a holding facility (work release or day reporting) they can work towards it (while earning good time – time off their sentence). The system is currently set up to process offenders from arrest to sentence completion as efficiently (cost effective) as possible. That community corrections model provides a manner to do this in (probation, parole, half-way housing, etc…) also aids with the over crowding issues, outweighing the lack of significant noted effect on crime rates and recidivism.
This combination is politically popular in it’s cost-effectiveness. Offenders in a low enough tear to go into privet facilities are responsible for their own funding ($10,000 – 15,000 for a 2-year probation sentence on average). Those who come in at a state level can have some costs covered by the state, but are mandated to choosing facilities from a given list (unless the courts approve an outside facility, in which case the financing reverts to the defendant’s responsibility), these facilities are for the therapies, classes, community services, drug testing, and other requirements of their sentences. The mandated facilities are often in contracts with the courts to keep the costs lower. On the surface this appears to be a benefit to the offender, but on the state level it’s more beneficial to them, when it comes to paying for services to ensure their clients complete (or have a fair shot at completing) their court requirements. All of this, while expensive, is still cheaper than spending public tax money on more facilities to detain offenders (which is more in line with crime control models).
Community models strong connections to rehabilitation and treatments are popular with society, as they show compassion and allow for restitution in several forms. However, the changes in crime rates are not linked to community models over other models. While each model has its strengths, no one focus is ‘the answer’. Crime control models are primarily about efficiency, and while the initial punishment is presented as incarceration, community options are not disavowed. It is more efficient to use community corrections than incarcerate most offenses, so community corrections are utilized.
I feel like the current models are a result of frustration with past models not being ‘the answer’, and changing environments as well as public awareness. Society is overwhelmed at the moment and less concerned with the details of corrections for it. So long as the bad guys are being caught, processed, and they are not watching their tax money be spent on boring day reporting and work release facilities while the news reports crime rates are overall lower, they are happy. Never-mind that the current set up is more aligned with keeping a steady flow of clients through the privet sector, via sanctions and infractions that rank from justified to petty (completely counter to reform and creates recidivism).
Community corrections is the best model we’ve used thus far, regarding addressing the root cause to crime and correcting it, it just needs adjustments and proper funding to get a proper run. Crime
control goals are counterproductive to community goals, to properly asses and treat offenders would slow the system down and stall the ‘assembly line’ process. However, it would produce more effective (lasting) reform, and lower the criminal population over time.
References
“The Potential of Community Corrections to Improve Communities and Reduce Incarceration.” Federal Sentencing Reporter 26.2 (2013): 128-44. Web.
Welch, Michael. Corrections: A Critical Approach. 3 ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2011. Print.
White, Michael D. “The New York City Police Department, Its Crime Control Strategies and Organizational Changes, 1970-2009.” Justice Quarterly 31.1 (2014): 74-95. Web. <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07418825.2012.723032>.
— Jocelyn Johnson
Dirtsa's 