Intermediate Sanctions

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Chapter 5

• Intermediate Sanctions

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Intermediate Sanctions

• Alternatives to incarceration
• Operated by probation/parole agencies
• No need to create new bureaucracies
• More punitive than traditional community
  supervision
• Most are cheaper than imprisonment
• Community-based treatment more effective

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Logic of Intermediate Sanctions

1. Increase incapacitation, retribution, deterrence
2. Increase offenders sense of responsibility via
   demands for employment, self-discipline
3. More treatment and educational resources
   available in community higher success rates
4. Restitution more easily provided
5. Avoid the negative influences of the prison
6. Less cost more space for serious offenders

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Graduated Sanctions

• Punishment/intrusiveness of community supervision
  increased slowly if offender fails to cooperate
• Reduces recidivism, revocation, at least among
  drug offenders
• Increasingly popular

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Types of Sanctions

• Limited only by official creativity, initiative
• Front door Prior to prison
• Back door Early release from prison
• Restitution/community xervice
• Intensive supervision
• Home confinement/electronic monitoring
• Ignition interlock systems

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Types of Sanctions (continued)

• Day reporting centers
• Transitional facilities
• Split sentences
• Correctional bootcamps
• Therapeutic communities
• The only alternative sanction oriented primarily
  to treatment

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Restitution andCommunity Service

• Required for over 30 of probationers
• Most common alternative sanction
• Repopularized by victims, restorative justice
• Can be combined with mediation
• Restitution centers semisecure dormitories with
  transportation to job sites
• Community service used when society is victim

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Perpetual Incarceration Machine

• Increased emphasis on fees, fines, restitution
• Popular demands for retribution
• Dominance of new penologys cost-efficient
  orientation
• Increases frustration, failure among impoverished
  offenders

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Intensive Supervision Programs (ISPs)

• Designed for high-risk offenders
• 24 times more monthly contacts with parole
  officer
• Increases revocation/recidivism rates through
  greater scrutiny
• Most effective when combined with intensive
  counseling
• Usually employed for punishment, public safety

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Home Confinement and Electronic Monitoring

• Technology enforces strict curfew
• Work, therapy, basic errands only
• No adverse impacts on mental health
• Weekly schedule approved by officer
• Monitoring usually via phone by private
  contractor
• Quality varies with contractor, client selection

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Ignition Interlock Systems

• Used with drunk driving offenders
• Checks alcohol content of breath before car can
  be started
• Random checks after car is put in gear with some
  units
• Usually supplied by private contractors
• Usually paid for by offender

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Day Reporting Centers

• Structured, monitored environment for unemployed
  offenders
• Service (job counselors, educators, therapists)
  visit or work at center
• Offenders leave only for medical care,job
  interviews
• Use limited by location problems

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Transitional Facilities

• Halfway Houses
• Non-secure facility
• Living quarters and use of phone
• Work Release Centers
• Less secure than minimum security prison
• Both provide control intermediate between prison
  and parole

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Split Sentences or Shock Probation

• Brief incarceration followed intensive
  supervision in community
• Seeks deterrence without adverse effects of
  imprisonment
• Costly, little impact on recidivism
• Often utilize bootcamps

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Correctional Boot Camps

• Modeled on military, stress discipline
• Success ? ISP Failure ? Prison
• Popular with public and politicians
• No effect on recidivism unless treatment emphasis
  is added
• Costlier than prison
• Many problems with physical, sexual abuse

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Therapeutic Communities

• Residential treatment facilities
• Intensive, use variety of therapies
• Most common for drug/alcohol offenders
• High drop-out rate but recidivism rare among
  graduates
• Length of treatment critical to success rate
• Costs roughly equal prison but stay often shorter

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Effectiveness ofIntermediate Sanctions

• Each sanction addresses different goals
• Cost efficiency requires use with offenders who
  would otherwise be imprisoned
• Most common use is to make community supervision
  more punitive
• This addresses demands for greater retribution
  but is not cost efficient

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Dangers ofIntermediate Sanctions

• Growing culture of surveillance
• Americans already the most closely monitored
  people in world
• Expanding the net of social control
• The easier it is to supervise people, the more
  people placed under supervision
• A financial and moral issue

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Dangers (continued)

• Discriminatory use
• Net widening impacts least powerful
• Wealthy more able to avoid prison
• Control enhanced at expense of treatment
• Impact on third parties
• Risk reduction versus cost management
• Opportunity costs would resources be better used
  in other ways?