THE CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE COMMUNITY-BASED

SYSTEM OF CORRECTION

INTRODUCTION
To start off we need to understand that no one is born criminal and so he/she/they shall be
given the right to reform into a better human being. Initially we get to see that the prison
system of incarnation was considered to be the major mode of punishing the offenders.
However, we soon understand that there are other issues linked with this prison system of
incarcination. The key one is that there is a higher risk of recidivism, which means that after
being released from jail, the offender may engage in criminal activity again. Furthermore, the
inmates are always in danger of being harmed by the other heinous criminals, also the prisons
are not considered much cost friendly. Keeping the aforementioned concerns in mind, it was
recognized that there is a need to establish institutions that assist the criminal in his
rehabilitation while also being beneficial to the institutions. However, certain alternatives to
incarceration existed in prior years as well, and correctional programmes evolved throughout
time. Community correctional programmes have expanded significantly and now provide a
wide range of services. Various community correctional programmes are established to meet
this condition of sentence serving. These programmes keep the victim's needs in mind by
restoring their justice, and they also aid in the reformation of the criminal through
monitoring, rehabilitation, and other reformative programmes. That being stated, this paper is
primarily a study of community-based corrections and an explanation of their effectiveness
with special reference to three of its types-Probation, community service, and parole.

COMMUNITY CORRECTION
It implies monitoring and supervising criminals in the community. These criminals are
serving court-ordered sentences as an alternative to jail or as a condition of their release from
prison on parole. This means they must report to their community correctional officer on a
routine basis and may be required to engage in unpaid community service and rehabilitation
programmes. General community supervision, as well as day reporting centres, halfway
homes and other residential institutions, work release, and other community programmes, are
often managed by probation and parole organisations. Community corrections also has
several advantages, such as lower expenses, less overcrowding in jails, boot camps, and
allowing criminals to financially support themselves or their family. Along with its benefits,
community punishments have certain drawbacks. The main one is that public safety may be
jeopardised if the criminal remains in the neighbourhood Offenders in community-based
corrections really aren't "free," regardless of the fact that they have received a
community-based sentence rather than incarceration. Each programme type entails varying
degrees of control over the offenders' movements and activities. All community correctional
programmes strive to achieve numerous goals, including criminal responsibility,
rehabilitation services and surveillance, and cost efficiency reducing institutional congestion,
lowering expenses, and reforming criminals by reintegrating them into the community. And
plays important role in ensuring community safety by rehabilitating offenders. The reasoning
behind developing community corrections programmes rather than incarceration is that it is in
the best interests of society for offenders to be reformed into good citizens rather than being
sent to jail or prison and punished for their actions. It also provide ideas on criminal
behaviour such as social learning theory, subcultural theory, and so on. However, the heart of
community correction is that these constraints do not prohibit offenders from reaping the
benefits of staying in their own homes and communities.

PROBATION
The term probation is derived from the Latin verb probare, which means "to prove." Because
probation is a conditional release into the community, the probation term is a time for a
person's character and ability to satisfy specific standards to be tested. In other words, guilty
individuals must demonstrate to the court that they are competent of continuing in the society
and upholding its legal and moral norms. A probation officer monitors the offender's actions,
interacts with them on a regular basis, and may administer drug or alcohol tests or impose
other monitoring conditions. A technical violation is issued to an offender who breaches the
terms of his or her probation. If a probationer is discovered to be in violation, a court will
determine whether to reinstate probation with new limitations or to revoke probation and
imprison the offender. If the offender is determined to have committed another offence, his or
her probation is usually revoked. Probation arose from the desire to provide a more
humanitarian and effective way of dealing with the issues of substance abusers in society. It is
based on the premise that punishment does not either rehabilitate offenders or safeguard the
society. As a result, it provides an effective technique for accomplishing the desired goal of
justice. As a customised therapy technique, it decides each case on its own merits, based on
distinct and extensive examination. It has now broadened significantly to encompass
economic and social development based on the premise that criminals must be encouraged
not just to be law-abiding citizens, but also to contribute to the overall development of the
local community and society. As a result, the importance of the effect of the family and social
environment is emphasised. Probation assists a criminal in becoming an educated citizen and
rehabilitated member of an interdependent community. It is the most effective means of
rehabilitating a criminal. Probation can be classified into two types: official and informal. A
formal one entails closed monitoring by a probation officer, whereas an informal one entails
reporting to a court for court costs or other expenses.A formal probation is usually provided
when a person is accused with a violent crime, whereas an informal probation is usually
granted when a person is charged with a less serious offence. This is done to ensure that the
crime does not happen again. The Probation Officer would assist the offender in
rehabilitating himself while also attempting to wean him away from criminal tendencies.
Prior to the establishment of probation law, the courts were frequently presented with the
challenge of disposing of cases involving people accused with family negligence. In such
circumstances, the only option was to send them to prison, which was an unnecessary strain
on the state budget. With the introduction of probation as a technique of reformative justice,
the courts can now accept such criminals to probation, where they are managed by
professional probation officials who instil in them the importance of working hard and not
ignoring their family duties.

An analysis of crime data reveals that a high proportion of criminals are impoverished,
uneducated, and unskilled. Such criminals are victimised twice: first when they are denied
their fundamental human necessities in open society and forced to live in a subculture of
social marginalisation, and again when they are ground in the mill of criminal justice for
breaking the law. Probation would thus be an effective way of delivering justice to them, as
they would not be imprisoned and would also be trained, which would enhance their life in
the future. In addition, society is served. The probation system achieves society's goal of all
its members playing a good role by pursuing self-rehabilitation; it is an effective technique of
sustaining social cohesion by keeping lawbreakers under control. During the probation time,
the offender is also sent to various educational, vocational, and industrial institutes where he
is prepared for a career that would assist him in establishing a livelihood for himself once he
is ultimately freed and thereby leading an entirely honest life. And every labour a criminal
does as a probationer contributes to the national economy. It basically seeks to socialise the
offender by instructing him to engage in an earning occupation, allowing him to develop the
life habits required of a law-abiding member of the society. This instils in him a sense of
self-sufficiency, self-control, and self-confidence, all of which are unquestionably
fundamental characteristics of a free existence. As a result, he is no longer a burden on
society.

PAROLE

Parole refers to criminal criminals who are liberated from jail on condition that they serve the
remainder of their sentence in the community. Prisoners may be released to parole as a
consequence of a parole board decision (discretionary release/discretionary parole), statutory
provisions (mandatory release/mandatory parole), various kinds of post-custody conditional
monitoring, or a sentence to a term of supervised release. A term of supervised release in the
federal system is a sentence to a specified period of community supervision that follows a
sentence to a period of imprisonment in federal prison, both of which are issued by a federal
court at the time of sentencing. Parolees can have a variety of monitoring statuses, including
active supervision, which requires them to report to a parole authority on a regular basis in
person, via mail, or by phone. Some parolees may be on inactive status, which means they are
not required to report on a regular basis for a variety of reasons. For example, individuals
may obtain a decrease in monitoring, maybe as a result of compliance or satisfying all needed
conditions before the parole sentence expires, and therefore be switched from an active to an
inactive status. Other monitoring statuses include parolees with just financial requirements
left, those who have absconded, or those who have current warrants. Parolees are also usually
expected to complete certain conditions and follow certain norms of conduct when they are
out in the community. Failure to comply with any of the criteria may result in jail. Typically,
parolees are not permitted to consume alcohol or other intoxicants, nor are they permitted to
associate or correspond with certain types of undesirable people (such as felons). In most
cases, individuals must also get permission from their parole officers before engaging in
certain activities, like as changing job or living arrangements, marrying, owning or driving a
motor vehicle, travelling beyond the community, and accumulating significant indebtedness.
In addition, parolees must report to their parole officer on a regular basis. These parole
requirements significantly restrict their actions beyond the standard constraints placed by law
on an individual person. The parole officers are part of the administrative system that is
supposed to help and guide parolees. The parole terms serve a twofold purpose: they ban,
either totally or conditionally, activity that is judged hazardous to the individual's
reintegration into regular society. Furthermore, by requiring the parolee to report to the parole
officer and seek guidance and permission before doing numerous activities, the officer is
given information about the parolee and the chance to advise him. The combination puts the
parole officer in a position to try to lead the parolee toward positive growth.

COMMUNITY SERVICE

Germany required offenders to clean the town canal and pick up garbage in exchange for an
unpaid fine. In the mid-1960s, community service was initially utilised as a punishment for
juvenile delinquents, traffic offenders, white-collar criminals, and substance-abusing
celebrities in the United States. The emphasis of community service is on accountability
rather than punishment or rehabilitation. It emphasises "not the needs of offenders, but their
strengths; not their lack of awareness, but their capacity for responsibility; not their
vulnerability to social and psychological forces, but their potential to choose." These
distinguish a rehabilitative reaction to crime from a restorative/community service approach.
And, within a restorative system, punitive parts of community service orders may be imposed
solely as a result of the offender's contribution of time and effort. Community service can be
employed in a number of contexts, such as diversion or probation. It is an alternative penalty
for impoverished offenders who cannot pay monetary sanctions, as well as for affluent
individuals whose financial resources are so vast that monetary restitution has no punitive
impact. The community service work has benefitted faith-based groups, homeless shelters,
and other charitable organisations. Ironically, community service is still an underutilised
penalty. Only one out of every four convicts on probation is required to conduct community
service hours. Among the causes for this underutilization include a lack of cooperation with
regard to documenting the hours, the difficulty of ensuring compliance while on the job, and
the requirement to give evidence of completion for the court. Community service can be a
reparative sanction that connects the nature of the service to the offence to be sanctioned; a
positive sanction that elicits responsibility from the offender for his/her acts; and it can
minimise the strain on the correctional system. Community service allows the offender to
witness firsth and the indirect consequences of his or her crime. In this approach, the offender
may understand the reasons for societal tolerance's limitations. Furthermore, the offender is
given a constructive, proactive method of healing the harms created by his or her crime,
which has the ability to improve the offender's overall feeling of self-worth. This can be an
effective way of supporting the validity of the perpetrator. Finally, the services of criminals
may be a valuable resource for government and non-profit groups. Setting community service
as a requirement for community corrections provides benefits for both the offender and the
community. Essential chores, for example, are performed at no expense for the benefit of the
community. The probationer is given the opportunity to 'compensate' the community for the
offence committed. Second, the offender's appropriate and right placement may have a
therapeutic effect on him or her. The community is also appeased since the aspect of
punishment or retribution is brought home to the probationer. Finally, the community
becomes involved in the administration of justice in corrections.

CONCLUSION

If nothing else, the study of community-based corrections and the success of three forms of
corrections provides an understanding of the notion of "Hate Crime, Not Criminality." A
criminal must not be banished from society; rather, he must be rehabilitated in order to avoid
recidivism. Corrections in the community have gone a long way. The reintegration process
must not be undermined at any cost. Each correctional measure has its own shape and
manner, and the community monitoring functions must be employed with discretion.
Alternatives to traditional prison and jail detention have grown in popularity in this recent
years as officials strive to deal with overcrowded correctional facilities and the
ever-increasing expense of imprisoning offenders.
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