Why Are Conditional Sentencing Effective

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 contacts across all hours covered by the condition in order to verify compliance.

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

For over centuries, the only form of punishment and discouragement for humans is through the prison system. Because of this, these humans or inmates, are sentenced to spend a significant part of their life in a confined, small room. With that being said, the prison life can leave a remarkable toll on the inmates life in many different categories. The first and arguably most important comes in the form of mental health. Living in prison with have a great impact on the psychological part of your life. For example, The prison life is a very much different way of life than what us “normal” humans are accustomed to living in our society. Once that inmate takes their first step inside their new society, their whole mindset on how to live and communicate changes. The inmate’s psychological beliefs about what is right and wrong are in questioned as well as everything else they learned in the outside world. In a way, prison is a never ending mind game you are playing against yourself with no chance of wining. Other than the mental aspect of prison, family plays a very important role in an inmate’s sentence. Family can be the “make it or break it” deal for a lot of inmates. It is often said that “when a person gets sentenced to prison, the whole family serves the sentence.” Well, for many inmates that is the exact case. While that prisoner serves their time behind bars, their family is on the outside waiting in anticipation for their loved ones to be released. In a way, the families

Punishment has evolved from the days of waiting to be hung to the sophisticated prison systems of today. However prisons in the United States are crowded and costly and they are not always appropriate for all offenders, especially those that have committed minor offenses. In the last couple of decades new methods of punishment has been developed for the minor offender. These fall under the category of intermediate community sanction and consist of electronic monitoring and home confinement. These punishments have proven very useful in dealing with minor offenders, pretrial confinement and others in need of supervision. They seem to be effective and help to transfer some of the cost of prison back to the offender.

The concept of mandatory sentencing is a relatively new idea in the legal field. It was first introduced in 1951 with the Boggs Act, and it made simple marijuana possession a minimum of two to ten years with a $20,000 fine. This was eventually repealed by Congress in 1970, but mandatory sentences came back with the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Since then, the scope and presence of mandatory sentencing has only grown, especially mandatory sentences for drug related offenses. Recently, there has been a growing concern over the use and implementation of mandatory minimum sentencing, with many believing it reduces a judge’s ability to give out a sentence that they feel accordingly fits the crime. Many advocates for mandatory

Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means

Community Based Corrections programs, also known as halfway houses or Residential Reentry facilities, were established as an alternative for prisoners to complete their term of incarceration in a community setting. Residential Reentry facilities provide a structured environment for low, minimum, and high-risk offenders while allowing them to integrate back into society. Specifically, Residential Reentry facilities provide offenders the opportunity to gain employment, establish financial responsibility, and obtain suitable housing. With the overcrowding of prisons, the ability to participate in Community Based Correction programs enables the convicted criminals as well as prison staff to lessen the loads that come with working in a prison as well as improve the lifestyle that comes with incarceration. As with all things in life, there are positive as well as negative outcomes to the participation of these convicted criminals in community-based programs. In viewing the positive and negative outcomes, the end

If women have a house and bills to pay in order to keep the household they established intact and running they will stay out of trouble to maintain that goal of ownership and belonging. “Housing reduced the odds of recidivism by 83% (Weiss et al., 2010, p.260). By providing a place where women can live at least until they get on their feet and have a stable source of income will help them tremendously. Under the circumstances that they must undergo any treatment options recommended. Also they must acquire any other help to better themselves.

“Lock them up and throw away the key” – that is usually the headline when in regards to offenders going to prison. However, billions of dollars are going into maintaining prisons, yet the rate of recidivism is around 44% (Pearsons, 2011), so it is clear that prisons are no longer effective. The main argument of this paper is that because prisons are inefficient, they should be abolished so other forms of punishment can be found and acted upon. Firstly, this paper will discuss the function of prisons in regards to penal abolition. Also, it will identify what penal abolition is and explain three alternatives to prison – housing alternatives, restorative models, and

Electronic monitoring and intensive supervision are among the most commonly used forms of intermediate sanctions today. Intermediate sanctions are delivered through a variety of programs such as, fines, intensive supervision, restitution, substance abuse treatment, electronic monitoring, boot camps and halfway houses. Different types of sanctions may be coupled, such as restitution with intensive supervision or substance abuse treatment, or use in sequence, such as boot camp followed by intensive supervision. Furthermore, intermediate sanctions are different from traditional forms of sentencing in the fact that they are oriented less toward rehabilitation and more toward retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation. They are more punitive and more restrictive. The recent popularity of intermediate sanctions is attributable largely to the record high levels of prison crowding that plaque many jurisdictions and a corresponding need to devise acceptable alternatives to

America cannot afford to continue incarcerating nonviolent criminals. Why reward offenders with food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and treatment programs at the taxpayers ' expense? Community supervision programs that require offenders to work to support themselves and their families make better sense. In addition, offenders should pay supervision fees, restitution to victims and court costs. Further, offenders on community supervision could utilize to addiction treatment programs and mental health services to avoid re-offending. Community supervision offers an excellent alternative to the high cost of incarceration while shifting the financial burden to the offender.

To support the policy there are different types of options that can be used instead of prison. These can include boot camps, electric monitoring, intensive supervision probation, day centres, periodic detention and harsher alternatives include the following community service, community based order and the option of imposing a fine (White & Perrone 2005). Boot camps are a short period of incarceration with the intention of presenting the offender with a strong message and ordinarily would be followed up by intensive supervision. The supervision can involve the offender submitting urinalysis tests and attending certain courses within the community and failing to comply with this can result incarceration (White & Perrone 2005). Electric monitoring involves the offender to wearing either an ankle or arm band that is electronically monitored from a base and will set off an alarm if they breach

   West Virginia state prisons have a maximum capacity of 2,154 inmates; currently they house 2,363 inmates, and more remain in City and County lockups to manage the overflow (West Virginia Blue Book). Home Confinement solves this problem. Reduction of the prison population should be reason enough to institute home confinement, but other reasons do exist. Would you like lower taxes? Home confinement costs much less than incarceration. Do you favor less crime? For certain types of criminals, home confinement has a better rehabilitation rate. Home confinement also differs from incarceration by the fact that it allows the confined person to contribute to society. For all of these

When family members and friends go to visit their loved ones in prison they face many barriers. Some of those barriers are the cost to visit, inmates getting shipped out of state, and only immediate families are allowed visit. For example, in the article Meheula the cost of visiting her boyfriend at Saguaro by herself is $1,000 to $1,200. Inmates were getting shipped out because of in state prisons were getting to overcrowded. Also Meheula brought along her mother and brother when she discovered that she wouldn’t be allowed to see both her boyfriend and nephew. The prison only immediate families to visit.

Home confinement and electronic monitoring description (for the purpose of this paper it will be implied that whenever referring to home confinement, electronic monitoring will be part of it):