Report on Client Specific Planning - A Study of the North Carolina Office of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives

• NCJ Number: 95047
• Author(s): J E Silbert
• Date Published: 1984
• Length: 26 pages
• Corporate Author: Silbert Feeley and Associates, Inc
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This evaluation of a North Carolina alternative sentencing plan concludes that many defendants would have been more harshly treated had they not been involved in the plan, although problems exist in the monitoring and enforcement of compliance with the conditions of the alternative sentence imposed.

Abstract

The National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA), a private nonprofit organization, provides a Client Specific Planning (CSP) service which prepares alternative sentencing plans for offenders at the request of defense attorneys; the plans are presented to the judge at sentencing. NCIA claims to take great care in individualizing these plans and accepts as clients only defendants who are likely to be sentenced to prison. The NCIA and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, using private foundation funding, opened a North Carolina office for CSP in January 1982, and by late 1983 had presented plans to the court for 73 cases. This evaluation focused on a sample of 33 cases presented and disposed of in 1982, interviewing judges, attorneys, and probation officers involved as well as key supervisors or third-party advocates for the 28 defendants whose plans were accepted. All defendants in the sample pled guilty and had been charged with a mean of nearly six counts each. The majority would have received active prison terms without NCIA's services. Moreover, judges, lawyers, and probation officers said they were more willing to consider alternatives to incarceration in serious cases following their exposure to CSP. Only half the clients had made substantial compliance with restitution orders, and very few had completed their court-ordered assignments in community service. These findings do not suggest that NCIA is at fault, but that CSP cannot have a meaningful impact unless a mechanism is developed to ensure that a sentence's conditions are carried out. Overall, criminal justice officials were strongly supportive of both NCIA and CSP. Tables and 13 footnotes are supplied.