Goals of Community Corrections.

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 "that's the way it has always been."

Map of Baton Rouge in 1863

Louisiana State Capitol, Baton Rouge

Seal of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana

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...