NCJ Number
140421
Journal
Corrections Today Volume: 54 Issue: 8 Dated: (December 1992) Pages: 74,76-79
Date Published
1992
Length
5 pages
Annotation
The most pressing issues facing the corrections community include promoting the concept of community justice, intermediate sanctions, demographic changes, the war on drugs, and victim concerns.
Abstract
In the course of promoting community justice, probation and parole have occasionally met resistance in some communities. Nonetheless, probation has become an increasingly popular response to criminal activity. To make probation more acceptable to the public, citizens must be helped to understand that effective community-based programs do not represent a "soft on crime" philosophy. Instead, they offer a combination of rehabilitation and punishment and give offenders a chance to return to society as productive community members. Intermediate sanctions offer the potential to save money while meeting offender needs. These sanctions must have an operational structure in place, and specific target populations must be identified and defined. Demographic shifts present new challenges for corrections, particularly with regard to the over-representation of minorities in the criminal justice system and the increased number of female offenders. Also, as the general population ages, the number of susceptible targets for violent crime and fraud increases. Drug offenders have saturated the criminal justice system and caused prison overcrowding. Drug testing of released offenders represents an alternative and effective means of monitoring drug use and reducing criminal risk. The victim rights movement presents several challenges for community-based corrections, including funding issues, victim-sensitive management information systems, staffing for victim concerns, automation of restitution systems, and the need to move toward a system of reparative justice. 6 references