Advantages and Disadvantages of Noncustodial Sentences Essay

Another commonly used alternative is house arrest and confinement. This sanction restricts an individual to his or her residence for specific periods of time; in most house arrest programs offenders are allowed to leave their homes only for employment, medical needs, or mandated assignments such as community service or school. The emphasis of this program is on confinement, and the supervising officers’ role is to ensure that the offender stays confined at home. There are three different levels of home confinement, each with a different degree of restricted freedom. The first is curfew which requires offenders to be in their residence during limited, specific hours, generally at night. The offender’s movements outside of the curfew hours are unregulated. The second is home detention that requires offenders to remain at home at all times except for employment, education, treatment, or other pre-approved activities. This program may be with the assisted with electronic monitoring. The last level is home incarceration. This program requires offenders to remain at home at all times, with very limited exceptions for religious or medical purposes. At a minimum, offenders are subject to random

In this essay it will first consider the arguments for and against non-custodial sentences as an alternative to imprisonment, which will ultimately help shape the understanding of the system and how it operates. In order to address this, it will look in detail at the variety of different non-custodial sentencing in relation to punishing offenders. This will evidently provide an ease of understanding for accessing how successful these have been in practice.

It is argued that custodial sentences play a significant role within society, incapacitating dangerous offenders and protecting members of the community. This essay will explore whether community sentences can also provide an effective alternative to custody and that offenders can be safely punished within the community. Section 142 of the Criminal Justice Act (2003) outlines the aims of imprisonment and sentencing. Community service orders were introduced by the Criminal Justice Act (1972), enforcing offenders that complied to take part in unpaid work that contributes back within society (Hucklesby and Wahidin, 2013). Community sentences can include various ways of reprimand: financial penalties, supervision or unpaid work (Worrall, 2013). It is argued by some criminologists that community sentences are a form of restorative justice; who those that offend should do something to repair the damage (Carrabine, Lee and Iganski, 2004). This essay will go on to discuss and debate social, economic and political factors in terms of community sentences being a viable alternative to imprisonment. Government agenda’s will be discussed within this essay, deliberating their policies as to whether community sentences could be a successful and valuable alternative to custody. In 2010, the green paper ‘Breaking the Cycle’ was set out by Government in order to reform sentences in the community, increasing the public’s confidence and reduce recidivism rates (Ministry of Justice, 2012).

Today there are several options a judge can grant an offender in regards to the punishment they shall fulfill before or after trial. This refers to any way ranging to non imprisonment yet supervised ways used to deal with criminal offenders who are facing conviction or who has been convicted.. There are punishment an offender may receive such as fines, community service, electronic surveillance also know as house arrest, shock probation, intensive supervision, residential community supervision etc. The most common punishment used by the justice system is probation as well as parole. Probation is the release of an offender from detention , subject to a period of good behavior under supervision. An individual may be granted probation as an

These alternatives may include boot camps, probation and electronic monitoring. Probation and electronic monitoring and probation are similar in the fact that these two forms of punishment that require the offender to be monitored while there are some marked differences. In electronic monitoring offenders are ordered to wear an ankle bracelet at all times to confirm where you are for a certain period of time; most likely only being allowed to travel to work, school and home. Probation requires offenders to be assigned certain conditions that need to be met. Attending counseling, meeting curfews, avoiding certain individuals and completing anger management classes are all requirements that be assigned to the juvenile. Juveniles will be assigned a probation officer who reports back to the court. Any violations could result in the offender being sent back to the detention

House Arrest and Electronic Monitoring: These methods if properly operated can be a cost effective, community friendly program to maintain low-risk and non-violent offenders. Offenders can only leave the home for medical appointments or emergencies, work, community service, and

The way I would justify it? I think the system avoids time wasting and court proceedings. I would justify

This particular article compares traditionally certified to alternatively certified program graduates with others carrying out a carefully constructed alternatively certified program. There are some AC programs that give teachers who are lacking proper credentials a provisional status and allow them to teach while obtaining the college credits that are equivalent to standard requirements for teacher certification programs. Some states permit Arts and Sciences graduates to go through intensified

To begin with, accordingly to (Schmalleger, 2014) text, one similarity and one objective, effectiveness and efficiency of probation, parole and immediate sanctions consist of the followings: First, probation is defined as “a sentence served while under supervision in the community. Like other sentencing options, probation is a court-ordered sanction. The effectiveness of probation is that the national is 1,845 for every 100.000 residents. About 65% of the 2.3 million adults discharged from probation in 2010 successfully met the conditions of their supervision. Approximately 16% of those discharged from supervision, however, were incarnated because a rule violation or because they committed a new offense. Another 3% absconded, and 13% had their probation sentences revoked without being ordered to serve time.

The aim behind these community corrections programs is to give a second chance to the petty offenders and help them becoming the productive citizen of the country. Since, most of the people in the community start treating the people who once been prisoned as like an alien; they are not chosen for the jobs they deserve nor given the respect. Such behavior worsens the attitude of these people. Moreover, most of the people become psychological patients after coming out of the jail. The community corrections programs aims at providing non-violent offenders a favorable environment to build their confidence. They are saved from prison and given a chance to live a normal life. Since, the environment of jail is tormenting and instead of becoming a better person, the people with minor offences become more negative.

Along with this individual’s probation restrictions, the individual must complete 1,000 hours of community service (some time on the week day) in the time span of 10 months. The probation officer has set a VI-25 (days) for each month. The probation officer checks back in with the individual at a different time around the end of the month (slightly before or slightly after the 25-day mark). If the number of hours of community service the individual has increased at least 50-100 hours, then the individual’s probationary curfew can be extended 30 minutes for that month. This is an example of a variable-interval reinforcement schedule because the probation officer has set the average day to check in with the individual as the 25th, however, the officer can go check in and review the individual’s community service log slightly before or after the 25th.

The effectiveness of EM is measured with two approaches in whether the individual is able to finish their order and the impact of the curfew on offending behaviour. It has been found that 75% of offenders on EM tend to complete their orders with fraud offenders being the most

In England and Wales, during the 1980’s “tracking” and “electronic monitoring” became the forefront of policy maker’s agenda to tackle young, “low risk” offenders released from prison, or as an alternative community order for those who potentially may have been subject to a custodial sentence. Electronic monitoring can be defined as “a system of home confinement aimed at monitoring and controlling and modifying the behaviour of defendants or offenders” (Prisoners Reform Trust, 1997, as cited in Ardley, 2005), and was introduced by the Criminal Justice Act, 1991 (HMI Probation, 2012). Electronic monitoring was founded upon the notion of “tracking” offenders movements, then expanded to include curfew tagging, which involves confining offenders to their homes, (Nellis, 2004) and came into practice in the U.K in 1995 (Ardley, 2005). Foremost, electronic monitoring was developed with the goal that it would provide a more cost effective solution to custodial sentences, thus reducing the prison population, with no added risk to the public. To diminish the risk of “learnt criminal behaviour through communication” through offenders mixing with other offenders in custody, as identified by Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory (Newburn, 2009), and attempting to reduce stigma and disruption to family life (Ardley, 2005).

I decided to pick the most widely used but least understood intermediate sanction to discuss. Which is Electronic Monitoring, one of the many benefits of using electronic monitoring is knowing the whereabouts of the offender at all times. In the textbook it states “at random times throughout the day, the offender’s home phone will ring, and the offender has a certain amount of time to answer.”(Hanser 134) Which is a great benefit, knowing that you have to answer the phone will stop anyone from wanting to leave there house and risking their monitoring alarm going off. I personally support this type of penalty because it confides the criminal to their house and it stops them from being a harm to their communities. Another benefit of keeping

Community corrections can be defined as orders and strict instructions given to convicted adults and juveniles, which occur in a community setting outside jail or prison. It involves the supervision and management of offenders by community correction officers in the community. It usually happens when offenders are imposed to undertake community projects as an alternative to imprisonment. It can also be a condition of release on parole from prison. Community corrections bring several benefits to the offender such as learning how to become accountable and how to plan effectively (National Institute of Justice, 2014).