Correctional Decisions in the Community

Abstract

Decisions about convicted offenders do not end with the sentence of the judge. Indeed, a new series of decisions is only beginning—whether the offender is to be placed on probation (usually with suspension of a more severe sanction), whether he or she is to be sent to jail (or these sanctions are to be used in combination), whether another alternative is to be selected, or whether the person is to be sent to prison. All these decisions that are now required may be called correctional, not because they necessarily are corrective of the person’s behavior, but because the term corrections has come into common use to designate the complex of activities, programs, and systems such as probation, jail, prison, and parole that have been designed to deal with adjudicated persons in state custody. Setting aside issues of paroling decisions for Chapter 9, we seek in this chapter and the next to outline the general nature of some common decision problems in areas of corrections.