Goals of Community Corrections Essay

Identify the goals of Community Corrections and determine if the goals are being met. What would be your team’s recommendation to improve Community Corrections? Today, 3 out of every 4 persons under correctional supervision in the United States are on some form of community-based custody-mostly probation or parole-although community corrections also includes halfway houses, residential centers, work furlough, and all other programs for managing the offender in the community. It is a legal status, an alternative to incarceration, a service-delivery mechanism, and an organizational entity. As an organizational entity, it has objectives and performs a wide range of activities-some totally unrelated to offender supervision and/or treatment. Having been founded more than 150 years ago, community corrections still has an unclear primary mission, with confusion about what activities contribute to that mission and how best to assess their performance. It’s amazing what people will believe and live by simply because â€Å"that’s the way it has always been.† Nobody ever thought to question the standard from which it began. Now, 150 years later, the problem is so magnificent that the mere thought of tackling such an issue exhaust the mind, therefore no one tries. The goals of community corrections that we have come across while researching include punishment, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. I have found that this is a general outlook on the goals of community corrections, each corrections institute has their own set of goals for their particular community corrections department. Sharon found that the goals of the Florida department of corrections are: 1) Protect the public, staff and inmates 2) Develop staff committed to professionalism and fiscal responsibility 3) Ensure victims and stakeholders are treated with dignity, sensitivity and respect in making and executing administrative and operational decisions 4) Prepare offenders for re-entry and release into society are to see that offenders obey the law and to help them identify and address their problems. Shelly found that in Louisiana a few goals and priorities of public safety and community corrections are: public safety, of course hence the name, staff and inmate safety, provisions for service, opportunity for change, and the opportunity to make amends. The Louisiana corrections community also held a heart walk in Baton Rouge in March of last year hoping to raise money to help the communities that have been harmed by crimes. This allowed those who have changed or with a desire to change to be able to show their willingness and involvement. They raised over $37,000. I am not sure if the goals of community corrections are being made but it seems as if they are making a darn good effort. Community Corrections is basically the governments formula of keeping track of individuals who are insane or have somehow wronged society. The goal of The Community Corrections claim to be protecting the public, staff, and inmates. What exactly are Community Corrections protecting us from? It seems to me that Community Corrections are more avid in protecting profits, not people. The concept was developed 150 years ago in order to keep track of, punish, or incarcerate (remove) individuals who pose a problem to society. Vanessa personally thinks it is a huge joke and its funny how everyone accepts it. Community Correction’s say, â€Å"A community must take these necessary measures in order to stay viable.† What measures are being taken? That depends on where the individual lives. Even then it is rare to see a community excel or benefit from any of these â€Å"measures† taken. If the government really wanted to correct problems in the community they would start by developing a standard from which to start. This would begin with identifying actual problems and researching the best method to deal with the problems. Only then could they create a unified community corrections facility that actually does what it’s name claims. To improve community corrections :The National Institute of Corrections should 1) take a pro active leadership role in influencing national policies, practices, and operations by developing programs that address areas of emerging interest and concern to corrections executives, practitioners, and public policy makers; 2) Respond to client agencies and staff with relevant and useful assistance to improve their corrections systems. We need to improve offender job training and placement efforts. â€Å"Public safety† and â€Å"restorative justice† are big ideas now making claims on the future of community corrections. Despite their uncertain futures, restorative justice and public safety are already  reshaping community corrections around the country. In order for public safety to serve as a strategic objective for community corrections, answers are needed to some basic questions: What is public safety? Where is it found? What would probation and parole agencies have to do for there to be more of it? In popular discourse, public safety is equated with more arrests, more prisoners, longer sentences, and lower rates of recidivism. These are conventional output measures of the criminal justice  system, but they are poor proxies for public safety. Public safety defined: As an objective for community corrections, public safety is best conceived as  the condition of a place, at times when people in that place are justified in feeling free of threat to their persons and property.[2] As a condition of place and time, public safety is threatened whenever a vulnerable person or unguarded property is in the same place as a potential offender at a time when