Every community has an existing order of law that govern the behavior and coexistence of the members of the community. Due to circumstantial incidences and other reasons, some people find themselves on the wrong side of the law, having broken some of the rules or gone against the set up rules, sometimes offending the state or individuals. The common criminal procedure in many communities and countries in the world is arresting perpetrators of the crime and presenting them to the respective courts of law where their fate is decided. Once in court, if the culprit is found to be guilty, the law provides for various punitive measures that include; payment of fines, incarceration, or some community based interventions. The fines are payable to the government and sometimes may serve to compensate the offended persons or as a replacement for a destroyed or stolen property. Incarcerations may however occur in various ways including life imprisonment in jails or in alternative incarceration centers or even in homes. Community based interventions include parole, probation and intensive correction orders. Imprisonment, and the community based interventions are the common punitive measures in the United States. Each has its principles and performance level and an overall effect on the criminal life of a victim which his study seeks to establish.
Once sentenced to life in prison for whatever period of time, the prisoner is made to live a life of less freedom, subscribing to the jail schedules and limited to have most of the freedoms. The freedoms that may be limited in the jails include; the freedom to interact, free speech and, independent individuals. In these prisons, they only interact with fellow prisoners and other convicts under full time security of prison wardens and officials. The prisons are meant to bring about correction and rehabilitate the criminal from repeating the same mistakes or other offences against the law. However, in many cases, the rate of return prisoners is relatively high as the prisoners are soon caught in similar or other mistakes as soon as they are free. This proves the inefficiency of the prisons to correct or help in reforming the criminal. The inefficiency is attributable to the poor systems of integrating the criminals back to the community after completing their terms in prisons.
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Some of the ex-convicts may go back to their criminal behavior as a result of being stigmatized in the community to the point that they can barely relate even with family. Others, after serving too long terms in the prisons have no starting point for their lives and resort to committing more crime (Cullen, Jonson, & Mears, 2017). In some other cases, the criminals often develop resistance to the law after serving their prison terms and do not view the prisons, which the society presumes to be the worst form of punishment as any big deal subsequently not minding returning to these facilities. The efforts by prison services to equip prisoners with technical skills that could benefit them after their release often fail to be productive as these prisoners lack the opportunity to practice whatever skills they gathered in the prisons.
There have been many proposals on the ways of executing a smooth transition from prison life although none seems to be conclusive. Most of these proposals have been discredited for lack of evidence of success. The failure by researchers to provide conclusive research leaves policy makers without a choice for an effective system of reentry for ex-convicts yet organizations such as the American Correctional Association fully support evidence-based practices for reentry of ex-offenders." (Gideon, & Sung p. 23). These organizations further emphasize on the need to have evidence-based research on the topic since Evaluation research under evidence-based programs is an effective tool to test theory and the implemented intervention (Gideon, & Sung, 2011).
The failure of the smooth reentry of previously convicted persons back to the community has been a significant contributor to the rising cases of repeat offenders who still end up in the prisons. The lack of a proper system to stop crime for example appropriate guidance and counselling in the jail also contributes to the rising number of the repeat prisoners in the jails. Opting for parole has proved to be futile since the same prisoners after finishing their probation sentences shall have to face life as it is, eventually going back to their criminal lifestyle. The jails sometimes provide a comfort zone for some criminals, especially those that serve for long terms and do not have a starting point in life once they are released from the facilities. These factors make the prison intervention for crime inefficient. The case is exacerbated by the fact that the government continuously uses a lot of revenues on these correctional facilities yet they are not productive.
The weaknesses in the imprisonment system lay a basic foundation for the support of the community based intervention, making it seem a better and successful intervention for crime. The community based intervention is more efficient since the convict is not fully excluded from the society (Kewley, 2017). In most probation cases, the convict shall be required to report severally to the community correctional authorities as per the instructions of the court as he or she continues with the normal life. Probation officers may however need to constantly monitor the person of interest to ensure that they are adhering to the orders of the court. In probation case, the court may restrict the person from accessing certain places or engaging with certain persons for a given period of time if it is convinced that such interactions would further contribute to the person’s activity and participation in crime. The court may also order a victim to visit rehabilitation centers where they could receive proper counselling to get over their criminal behavior. The community correctional officer in the event that the convict is to attend such facilities must follow up on their progress to ensure that it is effective in imparting change in criminal personality of the culprit.
An intensive correctional order is an alternative to life imprisonment and requires the convict to stay in only one address during their whole sentence and dedicate 32 hours a month to community service while still under the strict monitoring of correctional authorities (Klingele, 2015). The Intensive correctional order serves the same purpose as home detention for persons that do not threaten the safety of the community.
As a correctional method, the intensive correctional order and other similar criteria have proved to be better options to the imprisoning system. In these strategies, the convicts can run their lives as part of the community and shall not struggle to live within the society even after their sentences are over, therefore avoiding the issue of smooth transitions into normal lives after the completion of the sentences. It is also easier to reach the objective of correcting and rehabilitating a victim using the community based interventions since the environment is accommodative of the necessary changes to stop a criminal lifestyle especially with rehabilitation programs that are not present in the prison systems. For these reasons, governments should uphold community based interventions for crime and even save on the money spent in maintaining the prisons that eventually prove to be expensive for the tax payers.
References
Cullen, F. T., Jonson, C. L., & Mears, D. P. (2017). Reinventing community corrections. Crime and Justice, 46(1), 27-93.
Gideon, L., & Sung, H. E. (2011). Rethinking corrections: Rehabilitation, reentry, and reintegration (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. p. 23
Kewley, S. (2017). Strength based approaches and protective factors from a criminological perspective. Aggression and violent behavior, 32, 11-18.
Klingele, C. (2015). The promises and perils of evidence-based corrections. Notre Dame L. Rev., 91, 537.
