NCJ Number
84059
Journal
Crime and Delinquency Volume: 28 Issue: 3 Dated: (July 1982) Pages: 341-373
Date Published
1982
Length
33 pages
Annotation
Evaluations of many community programs controvert a number of common assumptions about the conditions and effects of noninstitutional correctional programs. Evidence will be presented in this essay that raises questions about the effectiveness, humaneness, and economy of community-based programs.
Abstract
Such programs have had, it is argued, a range of undesirable effects on the justice system and society that have not been widely recognized. In particular, there is a tendency for community programs to extend state control over an increasing proportion of the population. The validity of conventional explanations of the origins of community-based programs will be discussed, and an alternative theoretical framework will be proposed that takes account of the need for the social control apparatus to respond to larger structural exigencies in the advanced capitalist state. (Author abstract)