Corrections: An Overview
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Chapter Objectives
1. Describe the corrections explosion of the past 20 years, including the recent leveling off of correctional populations.
2. Describe how crime is measured in the United States, and list the kinds of crimes that cause people to enter correctional programs and institutions.
3. List and describe the various components of the criminal justice system, including the major components of the corrections subsystem.
4. Explain the importance of professionalism in the corrections field, and describe the characteristics of a true professional.
5. Define evidence-based corrections, and explain the important role that it plays in corrections professionalism today.
6. Understand what is meant by social diversity, and explain why issues of race, gender, and ethnicity are important in corrections today.
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Chapter Outline
I. The Corrections Explosion: Where do we go now?
While serious crime in the United States consistently declined throughout much of the 1990s, and while such declines continued into the early years of the 21st century, the number of people under correctional supervision in the country—not just the number of convicted offenders sent to prison—continued to climb, and only started to level off after 2010.
o Crime rates are approximately 20% lower today than they were in 1980.
o But the number of people on probation is up almost 300 percent since 1980, the nation’s prison population has increased by more than 400 percent, and the number of persons on parole has more than doubled.
· Why did the correctional population increase so dramatically in the face of declining crime rates?
o It is important to recognize that get-tough-on-crime laws, such as the three-strikes (and two-strikes) laws that were enacted in many states in the mid-1990s, fueled rapid increases in prison populations.
o A second reason correctional populations have rapidly increased can be found in the nation’s War on Drugs.
o Parole authorities, fearing civil liability and public outcry, became increasingly reluctant to release inmates.
o The corrections boom created its own growth dynamic.
§ As ever increasing numbers of people are placed on probation, the likelihood of probation violations increases.
§ Prison sentences for more violators result in larger prison populations.
§ When inmates are released from prison, they swell the numbers of those on parole, leading to a larger number of parole violations, which in turn fuels further prison growth
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A. Historical Roots of the Corrections Explosion
· Census reports show an almost relentless increase in the rate of imprisonment over the past 160 years.
· Today, the rate of imprisonment in this country is around 490 per 100,000 persons.
· The rate appears to have peaked in 2009 (at over 500 prisoners per every 100,000 people in the country), and now seems to be declining—if only a bit.
B. Turning the Corner
· Today’s state budgets have been hard pressed to continue funding prison expansion, and the number of people behind bars began to show a decline beginning around 2010.
· In order to reduce correctional expenditures even further, some states are using forms of early release from prison, shortening time served, reducing the period of probation or parole supervision, and shifting the responsibility of supervising convicted offenders to county-level governments (and away from state responsibility).
· In 2012, Melissa Hickman Barlow outlined a plan for the implementation of sustainable justice.
o Barlow defined sustainable justice as “criminal laws and criminal justice institutions, policies, and practices that achieve justice in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to have the benefits of a just society.”
o Barlow’s call for affordable justice, based on principles and operating practices that can be carried into the future without bankrupting generations yet to come, represents an important turning point in United States’ approach to corrections and other justice institutions.
C. Correctional Employment
· The most current statistics available show that the number of uniformed correctional officers has increased to more than 490,000.
· When juvenile detention facility personnel, probation and parole officers, correctional administrators, jailers, and other corrections professionals are added, the total number of persons employed in corrections today stands at more than 748,000.
· New prisons mean jobs and can contribute greatly to the health of local economies.
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II. Crime and Corrections
· The crimes that bring people into the American correctional system include felonies, misdemeanors, and minor law violations that are sometimes called infractions.
· Huge differences in the treatment of specific crimes exist among states.
A. Measuring Crime
· Two important sources of information on crime for correctional professionals are the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
· Corrections professionals closely analyze these data to forecast the numbers and types of correctional clients to expect in the future.
B. The Crime Funnel
· The proportion of criminal offenders who eventually enter the correctional system is very small.
III. Corrections and the Criminal Justice System
· The components of the criminal justice system are police, courts, and corrections.
· The process of criminal justice involves the activities of the agencies that make up the criminal justice system.
A. Entering the Correctional System
· The criminal justice system does not respond to all crime because most crimes are not discovered or reported to the police.
· If an offender is arrested, booked, and jailed to await an initial court appearance, the intake, custody, confinement, and supervision aspects of corrections first come into play at this stage of the criminal justice process.
B. Prosecution and Pretrial Procedure
· Exhibit 1-6 diagrams the American criminal justice system and indicates the relationship among the stages in the criminal justice processing of adult offenders.
· After an arrest, law enforcement agencies present information about the case and about the accused to the prosecutor, who decides whether to file formal charges with the court.
o If no charges are filed, the accused must be released.
C. Judicial Procedures
· Adjudication is the process by which a court arrives at a decision in a case.
· The adjudication process involves a number of steps:
o The first is arraignment.
§ Once an indictment or information is filed with the trial court, the accused is scheduled for arraignment.
§ At the arraignment, the accused is informed of the charges, advised of the rights of criminal defendants, and asked to enter a plea to the charges.
D. Sentencing and Sanctions
· After a guilty verdict or guilty plea, sentence is imposed.
· In assessing the circumstances surrounding a criminal act, courts often rely on presentence investigations by probation agencies or other designated authorities.
o Courts may consider victim impact statements.
· The sentencing choices available to judges and juries frequently include one or more of the following:
o The death penalty
o Incarceration in a prison, a jail, or another confinement facility
o Community service
o Probation, in which the convicted person is not confined but is subject to certain conditions and restrictions
o Fines, primarily as penalties for minor offenses
o Restitution, which requires the offender to provide financial compensation to the victim
· After the trial, a defendant may request appellate review of the conviction to see whether there was some serious error affected the defendant’s right to a fair trial.
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E. The Correctional Subsystem
· Institutional corrections and noninstitutional corrections can be distinguished.
· A report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) says that institutional corrections “involves the confinement and rehabilitation of adults and juveniles convicted of offenses against the law and the confinement of persons suspected of a crime awaiting trial and adjudication.”
· According to BJS, noninstitutional corrections, which is sometimes called community corrections, includes “pardon, probation, and parole activities, correctional administration not directly connectable to institutions, and miscellaneous [activities] not directly related to institutional care.”
The Societal Goals of Corrections
· The American Correctional Association (ACA) statement about the purpose of corrections is addressed primarily to corrections professionals.
o It recognizes, however, that the fundamental purpose of corrections “is to enhance social order and public safety.”
· In any society, social order and public safety depend on effective social control.
o Some forms of social control take the form of customs, norms, and what sociologists refer to as mores.
o Mores are behavioral standards that embody a group’s values.
· Societal expectations, whatever form they take, are sometimes enacted into law.
o The criminal law , also called penal law, is the body of rules and regulations that define public offenses, or wrongs committed against the state or society, and specify punishments for those offenses.
· The correctional subsystem is crucial in enforcing the dictates of the law because the rewards and punishments it carries out play a significant role in society’s control of its members.
IV. Professionalism in Corrections
· Only a few decades ago, some writers bemoaned the fact that the field of corrections had not achieved professional status.
· A profession is defined as an occupation granted high social status by virtue of the personal integrity of its members.
A. Standards and Training
· It was not until the late 1970s, that the American Correctional Association (ACA) Commission on Accreditation established the first training standards.
· Following ACA’s lead, virtually every state now requires at least 120 hours of preservice training for correctional officers working in institutional settings; many states require more.
· Through training, new members of a profession learn the core values and ideals, the basic knowledge, and the accepted practices central to the profession.
B. Basic Skills and Knowledge
· Mark S. Fleisher of Illinois State University identified four core traits essential to effective work in corrections. The traits are as follows:
o Accountability
o Strong writing skill.
o Effective presentational skills.
o A logical mind and the ability to solve problems.
C. Standard-Setting Organizations
· A number of standard-setting professional associations in the field of corrections have developed models of professionalism.
o Among them are the American Correctional Association (ACA), the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA), and the American Jail Association (AJA).
· Correctional associations offer training, hold meetings and seminars, create and maintain job banks, and produce literature relevant to corrections.
· In 1999, the ACA, through its national Commission on Correctional Certification, established a program for certifying correctional staff, from line officers to executive leaders.
· Accreditation is a formal process that highlights the quality of a facility in an effort to ensure that it meets health, safety, and other correctional standards.
D. Education
· Education builds critical-thinking skills, it allows the application of theory and ethical principles to a multitude of situations that are constantly in flux, and it provides insights into on-the-job difficulties.
V. Evidence-Based Corrections
· Corrections professionalism today includes recognition of the importance of scientific studies of corrections, referred to as evidence-based corrections(EBC)
· Evidence-based corrections is focused on determining what works in correctional settings; that is, what correctional programs are effective in reducing recidivism and in preventing future crimes.
· In any discussion of evidence-based correlations (also known as evidence-based penology), it is important to remember that the word evidence refers to scientific evidence, not to criminal evidence.
· This approach, says the center, “stands in contrast to opinion-based policy, which relies heavily on either the selective use of evidence … or on the untested views of individuals or groups, often inspired by ideological views and speculative conjecture.”
VI. Social Diversity in Corrections
· It wasn’t until the 1970s that women began to enter the corrections professions in significant numbers.
· Today, women working in correctional facilities largely have been accepted, as evidenced by the fact their proportion is more than double the proportion of female law enforcement officers—35 percent of correctional officers in the United States are women, while only 13 percent of police officers are female.
o Many went to work in facilities that housed males, where they soon found themselves confronting gender bias from an entrenched macho culture.
· Race, ethnicity, and gender are all aspects of social diversity—although diversity in society extends to many other areas as well, such as economics, religion, education, intellectual ability, and politics.