What is Community Corrections?

Introduction

Essentially, community corrections ascribe to the sanctions that are usually imposed on both adults and juveniles convicted by the court of law to reduce frequencies of recidivism. Unlike other forms of sentencing, community corrections can be implemented in a community setting or any other residential setting, apart from the jails (Gendreau & Goggin, 1996). Within the past few decades, researchers have been struggling to advance community corrections through the use of effective intervention principles. In fact, these community corrections triggered the “what works” movement, a movement formalized in 1990. There are four general principles of effective intervention which the movement is currently based on: the risk principle, criminogenic need principle, treatment principle and fidelity principle (Anstiss, 2013).

These principles have common features that help reduce recidivism based on meta-findings and meta-analyses obtained from hundreds of studies. It’s imperative to point out the fact that the “what works” movement has registered massive success on the basis of assessment and rehabilitation of criminals in nearly every criminal justice system around the world, especially in the United States (Cullen & Gendreau, 2011). This paper is an analysis of the aforementioned principles of effective intervention, particularly their implications and the effectiveness of each principle.

i) The Risk Principle

According to Lovins et.al (2007), the risk principle is the first general principle which is extremely well supported in a good number of research literature focused on community corrections. It’s typically based on the fact that the behavior of a criminal can be predicted, and thus this explains why this principle is...

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...example, a functional family therapy founded on the most compatible model can deliver the best success rates in terms recidivism reduction when delivered in a consistent manner by well-trained professionals. Basically, this principle is based on the idea that an intervention program must adhere on the best features meant to decrease reoffending rates; the integrity of an intervention program should be maintained when it comes to delivery of community correction services (Gendreau & Goggin, 1996).

Conclusion

It’s quite evident that one can hardly tell which of these principles of effective intervention are more effective or important than the other when it comes to community corrections. Nonetheless, the best results can only be obtained if these principles are applied together; by reinforcing one principle with the others (Anstiss, 2013; Cullen & Gendreau, 2011).