Intermediate Sanctions
Between Probation and Incarceration
Chapter Objectives
1. Define intermediate sanctions and describe their purpose.
2. Describe how intensive supervision probation works.
3. Explain what drug courts are.
4. Explain how day fines differ from traditional fines.
5. Describe what a sentence to community service entails.
6. Explain what day reporting centers are.
7. Describe how remote-location monitoring works.
8. Explain what residential community centers are.
9. Identify the major features of boot camps.
10. Define community corrections.
11. Explain what community corrections acts are.
Chapter Outline
I. Intermediate Sanctions
· Intermediate sanctions were new punishment options developed to fill the gap between traditional probation and traditional jail or prison sentences and to better match the severity of punishment to the seriousness of the crime.
o They are most often used for offenders considered nonviolent and low risk.
· Intermediate sanctions usually require the offender to lead a productive life in the community.
o They are sometimes referred to as alternatives to incarceration.
A. Value of Intermediate Sanctions
· Professional associations too are calling for greater use of intermediate sanctions.
o The American Jail Association, for example, believes that intermediate sanctions—not prison—should be the backbone of the corrections systems.
· Numerous national and statewide polls tapping public attitudes about preferences for intermediate sanctions with treatment over incarceration give policymakers and legislators breathing room on moves to reduce prison populations.
o The public supports intermediate sanctions with treatment over incarceration for low-level drug offenders, and they favor sentencing nonviolent offenders to community service or probation instead of imprisonment.
· Intermediate sanctions are valuable for a number of reasons.
o They provide a means for offenders who are not dangerous to repay their victims and their communities.
o They promote rehabilitation and the reintegration of the offender into the community.
o Once the programs are in place, they can do these things at a comparatively low cost.
· Intermediate sanctions should not be haphazardly planned or implemented.
o High-quality intermediate sanctions must be thoughtfully conceived, effectively targeted, well planned, and well staffed.
B. Varieties of Intermediate Sanctions
Intensive Supervision Probation
· Intensive supervision provision (ISP) is a technique of controlling offenders in the community under strict conditions by means of frequent reporting to a probation officer whose caseload is generally limited to 30 offenders.
· Requirements of ISP usually include performing community service, attending school or treatment programs, working or looking for employment, meeting with a probation officer (or team of officers) as often as five times a week, and submitting to curfews, employment checks, and tests for drug and alcohol use.
· Rearrests are reduced when offenders receive treatment in addition to increased surveillance and control of ISP programs.
Drug Courts (Drug Court Video Click Here)
· Drug courts are special courts that are given responsibility to treat, sanction, and reward drug offenders with punishment more restrictive than regular probation but less severe than incarceration.
· In 1989, troubled by the devastating impact of drugs and drug-related crime on Dade County (Florida) neighborhoods and the criminal justice system, Miami judge Herbert M. Klein developed the nation’s first drug court.
· In comparison with the aims of other types of courts, those of the drug court are much less punitive and more healing and restorative in nature.
o This new approach integrates substance abuse treatment, sanctions, incentives and frequent court appearances with case processing to place drug-involved defendants in judicially supervised rehabilitation programs.
· Independent analyses have concluded that drug courts significantly reduce the future criminal activities of offenders an average of approximately 7 to 14 percent.
· The Washington State Institute for Public Policy estimated the annual cost of drug court participation to be $4,300 per person compared to $23,000 per year for incarceration.
Fines
· Fines are financial penalties used as criminal sanctions.
· In the United States fines are rarely regarded as a tough criminal sanction.
· A day fine is a financial penalty scaled both to the defendant’s ability to pay and the seriousness of the crime.
o Day fines, also called structured fines, have been common in some northern and western European countries for many years.
o Because the use of fines could reduce the costs of courts and corrections and because day fines address problems of inequality, fines are a promising intermediate sanction.
Community Services
· Community service is a sentence to serve a specified number of hours working in unpaid positions with nonprofit or tax-supported agencies.
· Community service as a criminal sanction began in the United States in 1966 in Alameda County, California.
· States like Washington, Georgia, and Texas are making extensive use of community service.
o Washington State is breaking new ground with sentencing reform with the idea of interchangeable sentences for nonviolent or not very violent crimes against strangers.
· There is no evidence-based corrections literature examining the effectiveness of community service on reducing criminal activity.
Day Reporting Centers (Video Click Here)
· Day reporting centers (DRCs) are community correctional centers to which offenders frequently report to file daily schedules with supervision officers, showing how each hour will be spent.
· DRCs first developed in Great Britain in 1972.
o British officials noted that many offenders were imprisoned not because they posed a risk to the public but because they lacked basic skills to survive lawfully.
· In 1986, the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department in Springfield, Massachusetts established the first DRC in the United States.
o Ten years later, a National Institute of Justice survey identified 114 DRCs in 22 states.
· Recent studies of DRCs in Vigo County, Indiana, Cook County (Chicago), Illinois, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, looked at rearrest and reincarceration and which variables were associated with program completion.
o Researchers discovered that almost one-half of the DRC clients who remained in the program for at least 70 days had not been rearrested compared to only one-quarter of the control group (those in the program fewer than 10 days).
Remote-Location Monitoring
· Remote-location monitoring are technologies, including global positioning system (GPS) devices and electronic monitoring (EM), which probation and parole officers use to monitor remotely the physical location of an offender.
· A minimum of eight states (California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin) have enacted laws permitting lifetime GPS monitoring of some sex offenders recently, however, the South Carolina Supreme Court declared that lifetime GPS tracking of sex offenders is unconstitutional.
· It is easy to find evaluations of remote-location monitoring that show positive results.
o For example, when researchers with the Center for Criminology and Public Policy Research at Florida State University compared the experiences of more than 5,000 medium- and high-risk offenders who were monitored electronically to more than 266,000 offenders not placed on monitoring during a six-year period, they found that electronic monitoring reduced the risk of failure by 31 percent.
· Dr. Doris MacKenzie, professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland and former scientist with the U.S. Department of Justice, wrote, “Restraining offenders in the community by increasing surveillance and control over their activities does not reduce their criminal activities.” “… effective correctional programs must focus on changing the individual.”
Residential Reentry Centers
· Residential reentry centers (RRCs) are medium-security correctional settings that offenders are permitted to leave regularly—unaccompanied by staff—for work, for educational or vocational programs, or for treatment in the community.
· Some estimate there may be in excess of 1,000 RCCs serving almost 30,000 residents each year.
· Recently a study of Ohio’s 38 RCCs were most effective with parole violators and higher-risk and proposed using more RRCs and diversion programs as ways to cut prison costs in Ohio.
o Furthermore, the most effective RRC programs provided the greatest number of services targeting criminogenic needs, offered cognitive behavioral treatment, and engaged in role playing and practicing of newly learned skills.
Boot Camps
· In 1983, in an effort to alleviate prison crowding and reduce recidivism, the departments of corrections in Oklahoma and Georgia opened the first adult prison programs modeled after military boot camps.
· Boot camp is a short institutional term of confinement that includes a physical regimen designed to develop self-discipline, respect for authority, responsibility, and a sense of accomplishment.
· The use of correctional boot camps is on the decline, and the evidence-based literature reports that the average boot camp has no effect on recidivism.
· Critics have raised questions about using boot camps as a correctional tool.
o They note that correctional boot camp programs are built on a model of military basic training that the military itself has found lacking and in some cases has revised.
TIP: Parents have been sentenced to attend school with their children, one judge had an offender spanked as he had hit his kids, and another judge gave an offender a slap on the wrist, as he did not think the offender deserved anything more severe. What are some “strange” sentences students have heard of?
II. Community Corrections
· Community corrections is a philosophy of correctional treatment that embraces:
o Decentralization of authority from state to local levels
o Citizen participation in program planning, design, implementation, and evaluation
o Redefinition of the population of offenders for whom incarceration is most appropriate
o Emphasis on rehabilitation through community programs
· The field is experiencing many changes, including community policing, community-based prosecution, community-based defender services, and community courts.
A. Community Corrections Acts
· The spirit of correctional collaboration and community partnership has led 36 states to pass community corrections acts (CCAs).
· CCAs are state laws that give economic grants to local communities to establish community corrections goals and policies and to develop and operate community corrections programs.
Community Corrections: A Strategy for Safety and Savings in the Future
· The current budget crisis the United States is facing has prompted many states to seize the moment and retool their sentencing and corrections options to better manage the 7.3 million Americans under correctional control.
· Successful reintegration of the offender into the community is also the primary goal of the International Community Corrections Association Code of Ethics.
· To help create a national agenda for stronger and more effective community corrections, the Pew Center brought together leading policymakers, correctional practitioners, and researchers from states such as Arizona, Kansas, and Texas that are already looking at which offenders should be locked up and which ones can be managed effectively in the community.
o The purpose of the meeting was to identify ways to help correctional agencies adopt the most effective evidence-based practices.
o The result was publication of the document Policy Framework to Strengthen Community Corrections.
o Six key components of the framework are:
§ Sort offenders by risk to public safety
§ Base intervention programs on science
§ Harness technology
§ Impose swift and certain sanctions for violation
§ Create incentives for success
§ Measure progress