The Four Major Principles And Concepts Of Community Corrections

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What Works Movement The National Institute of Justice tells us that Community Corrections are programs to oversee offenders outside jail or prison, and are administered by agencies or courts with the legal authority to enforce sanctions. A group of Canadian psychologists examined why some programs reduced re-offending while others did not. After many years of study these psychologists discovered that working intervention programs shared some common features and was developed into the Principles of Effective Intervention. These became organizing concepts of Community Corrections and stimulated that has become known as the what works movement. The what works movement consists of four general principles of effective intervention that have become …show more content…

It calls for focusing resources on high-risk cases, because high risk offenders really need interventions, and are often the first to be excluded from programs. Two major questions should be considered when reviewing the research on the risk principle. Which offenders does the risk principle dictate we target and what happens when we fail to target them?, and How has research informed our understanding of the risk principle and its implications for correctional interventions including predictions about offender by treatment interactions? (Lowenkamp, C. T., & Latessa, E. J. ,2005). Correctional programs need to utilize objective and standardized assessment tools to identify appropriate offenders for highly structured programs. Without this, programs would likely target the wrong offenders,and would be a waste of correctional funds. Offenders who are lower risk are best served with more traditional levels of supervision, where the offenders who are higher risk should be kept in programming longer to make sure that every effort is made to address their risk factor and needs. Although this concept seems …show more content…

Without the ability to be successful at intervening, criminal behavior is highly resistant to change, where the possibility of a life time of offending may occur will greatly increase the costs to society. Justice officials are faced with balancing the ideals of accountability, protecting community safety, rehabilitation, and reintegration, even with the possibility of failure. Present research suggests the system is in need for efforts that will ensure better and more consistent matching of services with criminogenic needs, as doing so is associated with reduced recidivism. Particular attention must be paid to the impact of possible gender-specific needs and responsivity factors on recidivism and to the possibility of their inclusion in treatment designation. The RNR principles are useful in the framework for correctional intervention and rehabilitation, and the development of risk–needs measures; these principles, and the tools based on them, require continued development in identifying the needs and trajectories of subgroups, such as female youth, that have, until recently, been largely overlooked in correctional research (Vitopoulos, N. A., Peterson-Badali, M., & Skilling, T. A. ,2012). Some approaches to treatment are better than others. Psychological researchers

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