Monroe County Probation Thus far with my field placement at Monroe County Probation, our required hours of 220 have been completed. At this point in the Social Work experience it was reassuring to finally be able to incorporate what we have learned inside the classroom to real life situations. Although my internship at Probation will be cut short, I feel I got the proper experience while I was there. The most beneficial part of my experience at probation was the amount of effort my supervisor’s put in to insure that I got the most out of my time there. While meeting and working with different officers, no two officers’ were alike. Each officer had their own way of handling situations whether they were more stern or laid back with their clients; in the end they all worked toward the policy of
The mission statement is to improve public safety by providing a continuity of appropriate treatment services in a safe and secure facilities where offenders’ needs are addresses and they are prepared for release, quickly followed by supportive services under community supervision to facilitate a successful completion of their sentence. The goals of NYS Corrections are to create and maintain an atmosphere where both offenders and staff feel secure, develop and implement a positive individualized treatment plans for each offender that includes post release reentry plans, teach offenders the need for discipline and respect, and the importance of a mature understanding of a work ethic. NYS Corrections also has goals of establishing a needs/risk approach to treatment and community supervision to ensure a continuity of services, assist all staff by providing the training and tools needed to perform their duties while enhancing their skills, and officer career development opportunities for all staff (DOCCS,
institution plays in their community; the effect of different stakeholder groups on their organizational mission; the importance of their staff in achieving the organization’s goals; and the impact of providing a safe and secure correctional environment where inmates can work toward their rehabilitation and return to live crime-free in the community” (p. 80). This is a large undertaking. It would behoove organizations to ensure that they are training staff in ways that will help promote these habits while increasing the efficacy of their organization.
Corrections has four main goals with crime. Those four goals are to help prevent crime and how to handle those who have committed crimes. These four goals each offer different vastly ways how on to handle those who have committed crime, and how to prevent it. These goals are retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation and incapacitation.
The Merriam Webster dictionary defines Probation as a period of time given to someone who commits a crime and instead of being incarcerated are allowed to spend their sentence in the community based on conditions set aside by the courts. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/probation) The task was given to me to build the ultimate model of Probation Services. After careful consideration and great thought this is the route I decided to take. I believe that parents play a great role in some of the decisions their children make. The decisions children make today are a reflection of their parents. My focus on this probation model is to place both child and parent in an institution were they would undergo a period of restoration of family values, rehabilitation, parenting courses, academia and counselling. The ages of these juveniles will range between the ages of ten (10) to seventeen (17) years old.Therefore I stand for institutionalized probation and how this probation will assist in instilling family values.
Every job has its ups and downs, but it just happened to be that we, as human beings, tend to drag our work problems with us to our personal life. Knowing how to separate work from personal life is hard, especially in today’s society considering the technology we have today. This research made me aware of the stress and everyday interactions that probation officers endure and I must admit, is more stressful than I thought. I have always imagined a probation officer’s job much more facile not having such a huge caseload, but like they say, ignorance is bliss. In the following essay, I will be discussing the findings about the stress of a probation officer.
Probation and parole officers are sentencing and supervision specialists and required to be investigative in their profession. They are responsible for providing meaningful assistance to the court in its deliberations and decisions concerning criminal offenders. Probation and parole officers deal with managing and operational activities. The Department of Community Corrections has the responsibility of supervising offenders who are on parole or probation, rehabilitative and restorative program services, and residential services.
Corrections officers are often faced with unimaginable situations in their role in providing the structure for prisoners to go back into society. In corrections facilities, there is a high turnover rate due to the physical and mental strain these officers endure. Issues such as riots, fights, gangs, dealing with inmates with mental health issues, and the potentially negative personality issues that prisoners bring with them to prison. This stress can lead to mental health issues, physical health disorders, and family problems. We need to provide them help and find ways to make the job more manageable to ensure the corrections officers are able to not only do their job, but also lead a productive life outside of work.
Many people who find themselves engulfed in law enforcement or criminal justice careers desire to serve their community; to help others and protect the citizens from offenders who have caused harm, by breaking the law. There are several career paths that a person can take to achieve their goal to serve their communities. Parole officers focus their efforts on enforcing conditions of release, incarcerating those who fail to comply with those conditions, reintegrating offenders safely into society, and closely monitoring parolees, thereby protecting the community.
Being given the opportunity to intern with the staff at the Family Resource Center in the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) has been a tremendous learning experience thus far. The opportunity has truly surpassed my expectation of what I imagined the journey of internship would be like and how it would help me to evolve into the professional arena as a social worker. I see myself transforming and viewing the community in which I live, the clients served, those deprived, and the tremendous job that we as social workers are tasked with to advocate for those in need from a more open-minded perspective. By enhancing and developing my personal and professional skills, such as active listening, observation, and professional comportment, I will be
All in all, the ideas surrounding the criminal justice system were affirmed by the field practice experience. Many open doors have resulted from the venture into the field of probation. As an advocate and future employee of the criminal justice system the skills and intellect gained from the college of criminal justice at SHSU along with the internship opportunity with the Dallas County Adult Probation Department will serve as a path to a successful career. The talented individuals and extraordinary situations encountered on the journey will not be forgotten.
Many different facets compose the makeup of a prison community. One of the main components of the prison culture is the correctional officer. The individuals that are responsible for the security at correctional facilities such as a prison are better known as CO’s or correctional officers. Typically, the higher the security levels of the prison, the lower the ratio of inmates to correctional officers. “State averages of inmates to COs range from about 3.5 to 1 up to 8 to 1 (with national averages of 5.4 to 1 in 2000), but these numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt” (Foster, 2006, p.164). With the aforementioned disparity with the number of COs to inmates naturally safety concerns arise when it comes to keeping both COs and inmates working and living in a safe environment.
Although it may not seem like a major problem to most people in the United States, prisons are becoming overcrowded, expensive to maintain and have little to no effect on the moral discipline of inmates. The current prison system is extremely inefficient and the purpose of prisons has been completely forgotten. According to Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, the primary purpose of prisons is to punish, to protect, and to rehabilitate. Not only is there an increase in prisoners, but there is a rise in the number of repeat offenders. Alternatives such as counseling, drug rehabilitation, education, job training and victim restitution must be better enforced and organized. People do not understand the severity of the problem mainly because
“The history of correctional thought and practice has been marked by enthusiasm for new approaches, disillusionment with these approaches, and then substitution of yet other tactics”(Clear 59). During the mid 1900s, many changes came about for the system of corrections in America. Once a new idea goes sour, a new one replaces it. Prisons shifted their focus from the punishment of offenders to the rehabilitation of offenders, then to the reentry into society, and back to incarceration. As times and the needs of the criminal justice system changed, new prison models were organized in hopes of lowering the crime rates in America. The three major models of prisons that were developed were the medical, model, the community model, and the crime control model.
The philosophy of probation has changed over the past several years. Originally, probation officers were considered social worker, able to focus on the individual offender, rather than statutory schemes of the legal system. This ideology aligned with the indeterminate sentencing structure that acknowledged individualization of the offender. However, today probation officers have been coined “the guardian of the guidelines” (Bunzel, 1995, para 2). Under this new philosophy, probation is a facilitator of the net-widening scheme that addresses governments’ main concerns of correctional facility overcrowding and high expenditures. The offender and the utilitarian motive fall second to the goals of net widening scheme. This has made the determinate sentencing model a mode to falsifying offenders’ rights to be treated with human dignity; by fulfilling the retributive goal of the justice models philosophy crime over criminal with the use of fix terms of supervision and sanction stacking practices.
For my field experience, I chose to attend a court case. On October 14th, 2015 I went to the District of Columbia court and watched a sentencing. It was not at all what I initially expected although after sitting in class for several weeks I was not shocked by it. What surprised me most was the informal, personal nature that the whole process had. The experience was interesting and I feel that I learned a lot from it.
In Intro to Criminal Justice class, I had the opportunity to learn about the Criminal Justice System more thoroughly. I learned that there are three components that make up the Criminal Justice System such as the courts, law enforcement, and corrections. Each component has its own role in making sure the the Criminal Justice System is functioning properly. If one of these components are not efficient the Criminal Justice system will not be as strong as it could be.