NCJ Number
131788
Date Published
1990
Length
10 pages
Annotation
In order to win legislators' support for residential community corrections (RCC), RCC providers and criminal justice policymakers need to find ways to explicitly define the links between sentencing purposes and the services RCC provides.
Abstract
Over the past 15 years, the emphasis among sentencing purposes has shifted from a goal of rehabilitation to three other goals: deterrence, incapacitation, and punishment. As a result of this movement away from rehabilitation, State sentencing laws were altered. Forty-eight States introduced mandatory sentencing laws or expanded existing laws; 13 States totally abolished indeterminacy, substituting determinate or presumptive sentencing schemes. Prison overcrowding and public fiscal cutbacks are two additional factors that have undermined the original RCC focus on rehabilitation and risked the clarity of the RCC purpose. To ensure a successful integration of RCC into a jurisdiction's corrections policy, there must be agreement on the purposes behind sentencing and corrections, the nature of RCC programs that will advance those objectives, and policies and procedures that will best guarantee appropriate use of RCC programs. An integrated residential community corrections policy may be best implemented within a limited risk control framework, in which categories of offenders are either confined or sanctioned in the community.