NCJ Number
169393
Journal
Crime & Delinquency Volume: 44 Issue: 1 Dated: special issue (January 1998) Pages: 70-74
Date Published
1998
Length
5 pages
Annotation
Christine Todd Whitman, Governor of the State of New Jersey, discusses how that State has approached crime and punishment.
Abstract
New Jersey has reinstituted and strengthened an electronic monitoring program for certain prisoners, a cost-effective experiment abandoned earlier because of security breaches. The State has increased the number of halfway house beds and quadrupled the number of community drug and alcohol treatment beds, in an effort to break the recidivism cycle that frequently accompanies prisoners' addiction. They have privatized a secure facility exclusively for drug and alcohol treatment and expanded the Intensive Surveillance and Supervision Parole program. They are rewriting the juvenile justice code. Judges will be able to consider public safety and offenders' accountability for their actions and courts will be able to require parents who fail to exercise reasonable supervision and control to pay restitution regardless of the offense. "Three Strikes and You're In" legislation has been implemented to deal with the worst and most persistent offenders.