Community supervision sanctions in criminal justice systems

¶ … community supervision sanctions compare with incarceration in terms of their ability to meet the goals of punishment?

Community supervision sanctions offer up a significant alternative to incarceration regarding their effectiveness in meeting the objectives of punishment. Because there is so much overcrowding in prisons community supervision has become an alternative which has been used more and more heavily and with some success (Cole & Gertz, 2012). Community supervision offers a viable alternative to the prison system in that it is able to return prisoners to their families while keeping watch over their activities, while offering up some form of rehabilitation. The prison industry is simply too costly to keep all prisoners under lock and key, particularly with state prisons collectively containing 1.2 million people (Cole & Gertz, 2012). Thus, community supervision can't help but be a natural outgrowth of this phenomenon, as prisons have their limits. Furthermore, this is a nation which simply can't afford to keep sending criminals to overcrowded jails where the likelihood for rehabilitation is low. According to Cole, "We think a reentry analysis makes a com-pelling case for a reconsideration of the jurisprudential logic of parole as well. The central tenet of our parole system is the idea that a prisoner is expected to serve a portion of his sentence in the community, and he risks return to prison -- often for the remainder of his sentence -- if he fails to meet certain conditions" (Cole & Gertz, 2012). This philosophy demonstrates a compelling aspect of what a prison sentence should be: there should be a repayment to society made and proactive effort on the prisoner's part to make good with the community, and through that effort, re-establishing himself as a worthwhile member of the community. Supervised community re-acclimatization can be a more worthwhile expenditure of time and organizational manpower when it comes to finding a viable solution to the population of adult offenders.

However, not everyone sees the promise and possibilities when it comes to community supervision. And as it stands the means by which community supervision is achieved is flawed; however, that doesn't mean that it's not without promise. "One probation officer in that agency can be responsible for 'supervising' literally thousands of probationers" (Worrall, 2008). This doesn't mean that community supervision is inadequate; it just means that the way in which community supervision is conducted today is inadequate. There need to be more probation officers working in this field and more resources available to prisoners. The way that community supervision is set-up today is destined to fail, but that doesn't mean that it's not a promising alternative to incarceration. One probation officer having thousands of former prisoners on his watch is a system which is destined to fail. "This has prompted the following claim: 'Apparently, community su-pervision has been seen as a kind of elastic resource that could handle whatever numbers of offenders the system required it to'" (Worrall, 2008). The reality is that this system is currently overburdened and thus ineffective at this time. However, that doesn't mean that it can't be effective in the future, if a real investment of time, money and organizational manpower is placed in it. "In another noted scholar's words, 'it is safe to say that the overall services and monitoring are woefully inadequate to meet the needs of today's community corrections clients'" (Worrall, 2008). Rather than using this evidence as a reason to eradicate community supervision programs and just construct more prisons, this should be used as a reason to improve the community supervision program with conscious program-building and a real investment from both private enterprises and the federal government of the nation.