1. Intermediate Sanctions and Community Corrections

2. the arguments for intermediate sanctions
traditional probation does not work with most offenders; they need more
but imprisonment is too much: too restrictive for many offenders
justice is best served by options between these extremes
prison
probation I

3. “continuum of sanctions”
definition
“continuum of sanctions”
a range of correctional management strategies which vary in degrees of intrusiveness & control over an offender; the offender is moved up or down along the continuum, based on his or her response to correctional programs along the spectrum of options…

4. continuum of sanctions
most severe
least severe

5. annual costs of prison vs. intermediate sanctions
Data are for Colorado, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia.
annual cost

6. definition
First Step
Probation
Offender reports to probation officer periodically,
depending on the offense sometimes as frequently
as several times a month or as infrequently as once
as year.

7. Second Step Intensive Supervision Probation
Intensive supervision of probation (ISP) permits probationers to live at home but under relatively strict restrictions. ISP offenders usually are required to perform community service, work, attend school or treatment program, meet with a probation officer or a team of two officers as often as five times a week, and submit to tests for drug and alcohol use, curfews, and employment checks.
A fairly new but already widely used program, ISP seems especially useful with high-risk probationers.

8. Conditions For Implementing Successful ISP
1. The project must address a pressing local problem.
2. The project must have clearly articulated goals that reflect goals that reflect the needs and desires of the community.
3. The project must have a receptive environment in both the parent organization and the larger system.
4. The organization must have a leader who is vitally committed to the objectives, values, and implementation of the project and who can devise practical strategies to motivate and effect change.
5. The project must have a director who shares the leader s ideas and values and uses them to guide the implementation process and operation of the project.
6. Practitioners must make the project their own, rather than being coerced into it. They must participate in its development and have incentives to maintain its integrity
during the change process.
7. The project must have clear lines of authority and no ambiguity about who is in charge.
8. The change and its implementation must not be complex or sweeping.
9. The organization must have secure administration, low staff turnover, and plentiful
resources

9. Third Step Restitution and Fees
Used alone or in conjunction with probation or
intensive supervision and requires regular payments to crime victims or to the courts.

10. Financial Restitution
Financial restitution is payment of a sum of money by the offender either to the victim or to a public fund for victims of crime. The amount is usually based on the crime and, in some instances, on the offender’s ability to pay.
The purposes of financial restitution are to compensate victims for their losses and to teach offenders financial responsibility.
Offenders who do not have the resources to make their restitution
payments may be confined to a correctional facility at night while they are employed elsewhere during the day to earn money for their payments.

11. Day Fines
Day fines, which are used more frequently in Europe than in the United States, are fines that approximate an offender’s daily wages.
The purpose of the day fine is to equalize the financial impact of sentences on offenders. Day fines address the concern that fines are unduly harsh on poor offenders but permit affluent offenders to buy their way out of more punitive sanctions

12. definition
“day fine”
a financial criminal penalty based on the amount of income an offender earns in a day’s work;
in effect, offender is sentenced to a specified number of days’ worth of income, irrespective of his or her individual income level
X days of
income

13. Third Step Community Service
Used alone or in conjunction with probation or
intensive supervision and requires completion of
hours of work in and for the community.

14. Community Service
A community service order is a court order that requires an offender to work a certain number of hours at a private nonprofit or government agency.
Two general patterns have emerged for structuring community obligations:
(1) referring offenders to community agencies that handle the work placement and supervise completion of the community service obligation and
(2) assigning a group of offenders to provide a community service. The number of hours of community service to be completed is generally determined by the court or sometimes by program staff.
Commonly assigned public service projects include cleanup work on the local streets or in city parks, volunteer service in hospitals or in nursing homes, and repair jobs in rundown housing.

15. Forfeiture
Forfeiture involves the government’s seizing property that was derived from or used in criminal activity. In civil law, property used in criminal activity can be seized without a finding of guilt.
Under criminal law, forfeiture takes place following conviction and requires that offenders relinquish assets related to the crime. In the 1990s, state and federal law enforcement officers confiscated an estimated $1 billion worth of assets from drug dealers

16. Fourth Step Substance Abuse Treatment
Evaluation and referral services provided by
private outside agencies and used alone or in conjunction with either simple probation or intensive supervision.

17. (1) mandatory periodic testing for the use of controlled substances;
Drug Court
Drug courts are designed for nonviolent offenders with substance abuse problems who require integrated sanctions and services including
(1) mandatory periodic testing for the use of controlled substances;
(2) substance abuse treatment;
(3) diversion, probation, or other supervised release; and
(4) aftercare services such as relapse prevention, health care, education, vocational training, job placement, housing placement, and child care.

18. Fifth Step Day Reporting
Clients report to a central location every day, where they file daily schedules with their supervision officer showing how each hour will be spent—at work, in class, at support group meetings, etc.

19. Day Reporting
Day reporting is another form of intermediate sanction. The offender is assigned to a facility where he or she must report on a regular basis at a specific time every day to participate in activities such as counseling, social skill training, and employment training.
The goals of the day reporting center are to provide punishment in a cost-effective way,

20. Drug Treatment Programs
The Drug Treatment Alternative to Prison (DTAP) program offers pretrial defendants
in drug cases charged with a second felony offense an opportunity to enter residential treatment centers.
Those offenders who successfully complete the program have their charges dismissed by the district attorney’s office, and the offender avoids a prison sentence.

21. Sixth Step House Arrest and Electronic Monitoring
Used in conjunction with intensive supervision and restricts offender to home except when at work, school, or treatment.

22. House Arrest and Electronic Monitoring
The concept of house arrest, or home confinement, tends to vary from one jurisdiction to another and to produce varying degrees of offender control.
Home confinement rages from evening curfew to detention during all nonworking hours to continuous
confinement at home.
The most severe form of home confinement, or house arrest, requires offenders to remain in their home, other than when they have permission to leave for employment, religious services, and medical reasons.
The sanction of house arrest can stand alone, or it can be coupled with electronic monitoring, fines, community service, and other obligations.

23. Seventh-Step Halfway House
Residential settings for selected inmates as a
supplement to probation for those completing prison programs and for some probation or parole violators. Usually coupled with community service work and/or substance abuse treatment.

24. Eighth Step
Boot Camp
Rigorous military-style regiment for younger offenders, designed to accelerate punishment while instilling discipline, often with and educational component.

25. Boot Camps
Offenders sentenced to boot camps live in military-style barracks. They are usually first-time offenders in their late teens or early twenties, who undergo rigorous physical and behavioral training for three to six months.
Boot camps are designed to give offenders a sense of responsibility and accomplishment while improving self-discipline.
In a survey of boot camp programs, it was found that the typical pattern was the use of strict discipline, physical training, drill and ceremony, military bearing and courtesy, physical labor, and summary punishment for minor violations of rules.

26. Ninth Step Jail More serious offenders serve their terms at state
or federal prisons, while county jails are usually
designed to hold inmates for shorter periods.

27. administration of intermediate sanctions?
the judiciary
restitution
pretrial diversion
fines (>$1billion/yr)
forfeiture (RICO; >$1 billion-drugs)
the community
intensive supervision
electronic monitoring
home confinement
day reporting centers
probation center
day reporting ctr
restitution center
work furlough
medical treatment
drugs
psychological
the institution
shock incarceration
boot camp
fire, forestry camps
intermittent sent.

28. definition
“restitution”
compensation for financial, physical, or emotional loss caused by an offender, in the form of either monetary payment to the victim (or a public fund for crime victims) or work at a service project in the community

29. problems with intermediate sanctions
selecting the agency (who administers?)
selecting offender (who should receive?)
based on offense severity?
based on offender needs?
the troublesome issue of “stakes”
selecting the sentence
problem of interchangeability
widening the net
wider nets (catch more offenders)
stronger nets (harder to escape control)
different nets (different kinds of control)

30. definition
“stakes”
the potential losses to victims & CJS if offender fails; stakes include injury from new crimes + public pressure resulting from negative publicity
relevance: most “appropriate” sentence may not be “available” because of public/political pressure/concerns.
eg, high-profile offender simply can’t be paroled or put on probation.

31. “principle of interchangeability”
definition
“principle of interchangeability”
idea that different types of intermediate sanction can be calibrated so that they may be compared quantitatively with one other, despite significant differences in approach
Are these the same?
Which is equivalent to another?
4 months of boot camp?
or 12 months of home confinement?
or 8 months of community service?
or $10,000?

32. Review Types of intermediate sanctions include intensive
supervision of probation, restitution and fines, community
service orders, day reporting centers, house arrest
and electronic monitoring, halfway houses, drug
courts, and boot camps. Some sanctions are much older
than the others. The halfway house movement goes back
to early in the twentieth century. Some intensive supervision
of probation, restitution and community service
orders, house arrest and electronic monitoring, drug
courts, and boot camps are more widely used than
others. Reviews of these sanctions are mixed, but there
seems to be general agreement that they are preferable to
returning offenders to prison for technical violations of
probation and that some offenders, especially drug offenders,
appear to profit from these programs.