Chapter 23

1. Chapter 23 American Corrections: Looking Forward

2. American Corrections: Looking Forward • Five correctional dilemmas • Mission • Methods • Structure • Personal • Costs • Three challenges for the future of corrections • Challenge 1: Reinvigorate a new correctional leadership • Challenge 2: Refocus our investments on what works • Challenge 3: Reclaim the moral and ethical high road

3. FIVE CORRECTIONAL DILEMMAS • A dilemma is a situation that forces one to choose between unsatisfactory alternatives. Corrections faces many dilemmas—any worker in the field will attest to this fact. We have selected five dilemmas as particularly important, because they are what we consider “orienting” dilemmas for corrections. • Mission • Methods • Structure • Personal • Costs

4. Five correctional dilemmas correctional dilemmas STRUCTURE MISSION COSTS METHODS PERSONNEL

5. Mission • Corrections lacks a clear mission. One reason for this is that it has so many different clients—offenders, the general public, other government agencies—each of which has different expectations of corrections. In simple terms, we recognize that offenders want fairness, leniency, and assistance; the public wants protection from and punishment of criminals; government agencies want cooperation and coordination. Obviously, these expectations often come into conflict. Thus, one goal of corrections ultimately must be to disentangle the expectations and establish a set of priorities for handling them.

6. Methods • Obviously, if the correctional mission is unclear, the best correctional strategies and techniques will be ambiguous as well. When goals are in conflict, staff members have difficulty choosing among competing methods to perform their work: surveillance or service, custody or treatment. But this is not the only problem with correctional methods; much more significantly, correctional techniques often do not seem to work

7. Structure • Corrections is simply not in a position to influence its own fate significantly. Much of this inability has to do with its structure—internal and external. Internally, corrections is a process divided against itself. Jails, prisons, probation, and parole all struggle with one another; the practices of each become contingencies for the others. Externally, corrections represents the culmination of the criminal justice process, and it has little formal capacity to control the demand for its services. Thus, correctional leaders face two structural dilemmas.

8. Personal • Because corrections is a people-processing operation, its personnel are its main resource. The two essential goals in regard to staff are (1) attracting the right kinds of people to work in corrections and (2) motivating them to remain once they are employed. Corrections traditionally has not done well in either area.

9. Costs • One of the most notable aspects of corrections is that it is expensive. The cost of building a prison is more than $100,000 per cell, excluding financing. Each personnel position represents expenditures equal to twice his or her annual salary when fringe benefits, retirement costs, and office supplies are taken into consideration. The processing of an offender through the corrections system is usually at least $20,000 in direct costs and nearly half that much again in indirect costs (such as defaulted debts, welfare to families, and lost wages and taxes). The decision to punish an offender is a decision to allocate precious public resources, often irretrievably. Correctional administrators understand all this now more than ever. Allocating correctional resources wisely poses a huge challenge.

10. Challenge 1: Reinvigorate a new correctional leadership • The field of corrections will get nowhere without effective leadership. It is from its leaders that corrections will get the vision for a new future; it is from its leaders that corrections will find the capacity to embark on the difficult road of change. • acting in ways that correctional clients see as “legitimate”–that is, fair and reasonable • maintaining safe, drug-free environments in prisons and jails where staff and those confined inside can stay “clean”; • and making the management of “transparent” so the general public has knows what how corrections is being run and has confidence in it

11. Challenge 2: Refocus our Investments on What Works • Studies of program effectiveness has grown dramatically in recent years. Where once we would be lucky if we had barely even a study or two to decide a course of action, we now have literally hundreds of good-quality studies to inform our work in corrections. • Early Prevention measures implemented in the early years of the a child’s life from (or sometimes prior to) birth through to early adolescence, with a focus on children and youths before they engage in delinquency in the first place; • Risk-Focused, Evidence-Based Programs that identify the key risk factors for offending and implement proven–by systematic study–prevention methods designed to counteract them • A National Council on Early Prevention, modeled after successful nation-wide approaches used in Europe and seeks to support the early crime prevention strategy • Local Level Prevention that collaborates with other government departments, develop local problem-solving partnerships, and involves citizens • Communities That Care

12. Challenge 3: Reclaim the moral and ethical high road • What is disturbing about the U.S. corrections system is the way it has become so much more harsh than other systems of free societies. Here are some of the things that can be found, somewhere in the U.S. system • chain gangs cleaning roads wearing black striped shirts; • men in jail made to wear pink underwear; • signs in yards and on cars saying the person has been convicted of a crime; • children serving time in adult prisons; • eviction of people from their homes because of convictions of drug crimes • refusals of college loans because of convictions of drug crimes

13. Myths in Corrections • The Myth: The corrections system is too buffeted by political and social forces to be able to change • The Reality: The corrections system changes when people with new vision devote themselves to improving it. • Source: Three hundred years of history and the present realities described in this book