NCJ Number
81315
Journal
Federal Probation Volume: 45 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1981) Pages: 35-38
Date Published
1981
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article examines the reasons behind the failure of innovative correctional administrators and policymakers to work successfully with community agencies and suggests ways correctional decisionmakers can cooperate more effectively with such agencies.
Abstract
Part of the problem is that restraint and reform of offenders, rather than reintegration, have become the institutionalized objective of the correctional system. As long as the restraint model dominates correctional practice the field of corrections will probably not develop the knowledge and skills required for effectively interacting with the community agencies. Community corrections must shift its management attention to the community as the locus of intervention; it must find out more about available community services and about strategies for achieving community support and responsibility in combating recidivism crime. Research is needed that focuses on organizations and their environments, particularly the manner in which organizations relate to one another. Correctional organizations will need to become more adept at establishing exchange relationships. One way this can be accomplished is to adopt as their primary task a people-processing orientation. By defining their role in the exchange process as referral experts and organizational links, they shift the dominant responsibility for the provision of services for offenders to the community of agencies in both the public and private sector. Overall, the correctional organizations must develop competence in assessing community resource networks, in establishing and nurturing cooperative interorganizational exchange relationships with community resource providers, and in informing the public and policymakers of resource deficiencies or gaps that need to be ameliorated. A total of 20 footnotes are included.