COMMUNITY-BASED CORRECTIONS

With two-thirds of the total corrections caseload under probation or parole supervision today, the central question is no longer whether to handle offenders in the community but how to do so safely and successfully. Clearly, there is a need to incarcerate those criminals who are dangerous until they no longer are a threat to the community. However, for the large bulk of offenders, particularly the youthful, the first or the minor offender, institutional commitments can cause more problems than they solve.

Institutions tend to isolate offenders from society, both physically and psychologically, cutting them off from schools, jobs, families, and other supportive influences and increasing the probability that the label of criminal will be indelibly impressed upon them. The goal of reintegration is likely to be furthered much more readily by working with offenders in the community than by incarceration.

Additionally other goals are met. One is economy. In 1965 it cost, on the average, about $3,600 a year to keep a youngster in a training school, while it cost less than one-tenth that amount to keep him on probation. Even allowing for the substantial improvements in salaries and personnel needed to make community programs more effective, they are less costly. This is especially true when construction costs, which now run up to $20,000 for each bed in a children's institution, are included. The differential becomes even greater if the costs of welfare for the families of the incarcerated, as well as the loss of taxable income, are included. Various studies have sought to measure the success of community treatment. One summary analysis of 15 different studies of probation outcomes indicates that from 60 to 90 percent of the probationers studied completed terms without revocation. In another study, undertaken in California, 11,638 adult probationers who were granted probation during 1956 to 1958 were followed up after 7 years, Of this group almost 72 percent completed their probation terms without revocation.

[Excerpt from "Juvenile Delinquency: Its Prevention and Control"]

REHABILITATION AND CORRECTIONAL EFFORTS

Authorities in correctional services for juveniles agree on two major principles, both of which serve to orient our review of alternatives in the treatment of youths who have been judged delinquent.* The first principle is that traditional forms of incarceration in correctional institutions should be avoided insofar as possible. Such institutions, it is believed, are of dubious value as rehabilitative mechanisms, especially with the inadequate staffing and facilities found in most of them. Extended periods of incarceration in such institutions may prove to be positively damaging to a youth and may reduce the likelihood that he can be rehabilitated. In addition to the stigma attached to assignment to a correctional institution, which may become a serious barrier to the offender's return to a normal social life, there are such added hazards as the loss of contact with conventional society and intensified contact with other offenders. Not only is this form of treatment potentially damaging to the subjects, but the cost of such standard correctional programs is much greater than that associated with most of the alternatives to incarceration. From these considerations, it is clear that this alternative should be used only as a last resort.

The second and related principle is that the alternatives must be broad and diversified enough to encompass the whole range of offenders, both as to type and degree of severity of delinquent conduct. The available alternatives must provide for a wide range of treatment situations and procedures geared to the requirements of different types of delinquents.

[Excerpts from Task Force Report on Corrections]

The survey covers 220 State-operated juvenile institutional facilities in all States, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. These facilities, constituting S6 percent of the juvenile training capacity in the United States, had a total capacity of 42,423 in 1965 and a total average daily population of 42,389, which was 10.7 percent more than the population reported to the Children's Bureau in 1964 by 245 State and local facilities.

The overcrowding suggested by daily population figures is not uniform. In 17 jurisdictions, in programs housing total average daily populations of 7,199 children (17 percent of the total), the average daily population is more than 10 percent below each system's capacity. Conversely, in 11 States, in programs housing 9,165 children (22 percent of the total reported by all 52 jurisdictions), the average daily population is 10 percent or more above their respective system's capacities.

In many States the capacity of State and locally run training facilities is extended through use of private facilities. In some instances these are publicly subsidized, but control of the program remains in private hands. During the survey, 31 States reported using private facilities for the placement of delinquents. An estimate of the use of private facilities was not possible in eight of these States. The 23 States submitting estimates reported they had placed 6,307 youngsters in private facilities in 1965.

Concern about the increasing numbers of delinquents being housed in training facilities is growing. Only eight States at present have no plans for new construction which would increase the capacity of their institutional programs. Construction under way in 17 States will add space for 4,164 youngsters at a cost of $41,164,000. Thirty-one States report that they have $70,090,000 of construction authorized for an additional capacity of 7,090. Projecting still further ahead, 21 States report plans for additional capacity of 6,606 by 1975 at an anticipated cost of $66,060,000.

Thus, new construction, under way or authorized, will increase the present capacity (42,423 in State-run facilities) by 27 percent. By 1975, planned new construction will have increased present capacity by slightly over 42 percent. Construction in process or authorized is about 60,000 (see table 7).

TABLE 7.-Current and planned construction of correctional institutions in the United States

? Includes prorated capacity for jails which receive inmates for 30 days or longer. Jail construction is for persons awaiting trial or serving time.

Construction currently being planned for completion by 1975 would add over 50,000 more beds, for a total of almost 114,000 new beds by that date. Some of the new construction will replace obsolete facilities, but probably most of it will add to the present capacity. If all of the units being planned are added, the present capacity of correctional institutions will be increased by 24 percent. If the cost of correctional institution construction is estimated conservatively at an average of $10,000 a bed, the cost of these added facilities will be over $1 billion. ($1,135020,000). The added capacity will, of course, increase the operating expense When fully occupied, the new space will add, on the basis of current per capita costs, over $200 million annually to the operating cost of the institutions. That amount alone is about equal to the total amount now being spent on all probation and parole services, both juvenile and adult.

This trend can be reversed by more adequate staffing of conventional field services and by the development of new and more effective approaches within existing programs.

TABLE 1.-Some characteristics of corrections in the United States, 1965

Source: Computed from the National Survey of Corrections and special tabulations provided by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Unless otherwise indicated, data in this chapter are drawn from the National Survey of Corrections and special tabulations provided by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Administrative Office of the T.S. Courts.

Throughout this report, statistics from the National Survey of Corrections for "jails and other local adult institutions" refer only to institutions where a convicted offender may serve 30 days or longer. These do not include local police lockups or institutions whose sole function is the detention of persons awaiting trial. Offender population counts in this report do not include persons awaiting trial.