Parole/Probation Parole Is a Conditional

Parole/Probation

Parole is a conditional release of people serving time, to serve the rest of their time outside jail in the community as long as the terms of the release are complied with. Sometimes clients do not serve the parole according to the terms and conditions specified at the time of the grant for parole. Such problem clients need to be controlled and law and order has to be established. Many programs have also been made to ensure minimum cases of problem clients. There have been cases where parolees have collapsed back into crime during parole. When criminals are released back into the society, it is the job of the law enforcement and parole agencies to ensure that they do not collapse back into the crime world because then the concept of parole would become highly dangerous for the society. Hence multiple programs have been designed to stop this from happening.

A program called Reintegrating Alternatives Personal Program (RAPP) has been made to try and control recidivism. This program was started with the aim to get parolees employed and to reunite them with their families. This program offers a wide range of services which include counseling for substance abuse, mentoring, job placement assistance and many others. It is based on the biblical principle of the truth setting one free (Denise Barnes, p.B02). Many of the volunteers are taken from the church. One of the biggest problems that many parolees face is unemployment during their parole. Any firm, organization or company, whether a small scale or a large scale one is normally reluctant to hire parolees because they fear that hiring a criminal is like leaving the door to your house open at night while you sleep. This concept unfortunately exists in society today although by numerous studies it has been seen that releasing parolees into the society does not increase the crime rate. Recidivism cases do exist but in at a very small percentage. Moreover a parolee seems to be boycotted by his family in some cases and he feels left out and lonely. Without a job and no acceptance by the family he has not many options left and turns back towards the life of crime. To prevent such a situation from occurring, RAPP tries to provide parolees with a job so that they would earn money and not turn towards crime for the sake of survival. They also make the process of the family accepting the parolee easier which puts the parolee in a position where it is less likely for him to end up in prison again. However this is still no guarantee that the parolee would not go back to the world of crime. Other factors might push him towards it or he just might go back himself due to psychological problem. Hence an accurate evaluation will enable an assessment regarding the prisoner and the reasons why he might end up in prison again. Their weakness is that they lack professionals and take volunteers from the church, which could lead to an inaccurate assessment. However RAPP has a high success rate and there have not been instances of its failure. Many people have been provided with jobs and there has been a success in reuniting them with the family members.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has made a plan to decrease cases of recidivism which is an extended version of the intensive supervision plan. It is important to keep an eye on the parolees to ensure that they do not break the law again. Their supervision is very important and thus they are required to report to the parole officers at frequent intervals of time. Many who wish to break the law or are already breaking it tend not to report to the parole officers and thus loss of supervision means loss of control on the parolee's activities. To ensure that parolees do visit their parole officers on time, the governor decided to give them an incentive. He stated that parolees who would report on time would receive a monthly stipend of $25. This would then lead to an increased contact rate between the parolee and the parole officer and thus would decrease the chances of recidivism as the officer would be able to keep track of the parolee's activities. Giving an incentive to people is an important way of making them do something one wants. It keeps them motivated and in the right direction because normally the actions of a person depend on what he is being rewarded for rather than what is right and what is wrong. However its weakness is that $25 is not much of a figure that a criminal would count on. He would do a hundred times better financially if he were to backslide back into crime. "I doubt that $25 a month will be incentive enough for anybody to do the right thing" (Robert Redding Jr., p.B01). Moreover giving the incentive to someone so that they would visit the parole officer is not the very best way to ensure the elimination of recidivism. There is a lot more to it which would include drug abuse, psychological conditions, lack of job etc. A program needs to be broader and should deal with an assessment and then working out on the problem discovered via the assessment. Many have opposed this plan and although this particular program has not been adopted, the intensive supervision plan should not be the only tool to fight recidivism.