Corrections

Supervising offenders in the community is key to public safety. Community supervision officers must balance their need to manage growing caseloads with their need to ensure that offenders receive the services they need to become law-abiding citizens. At the same time, these officers are increasingly concerned about their own safety because they are more often in the field than in the office.

Around the country, state and local probation and parole officials are finding and testing new ways to meet these challenges. One of the most exciting ideas is to develop partnerships between law enforcement and community corrections. These partnerships increase the safety of supervision officers and—when combined with a focused, high-risk offender caseload—can offer more services and better results than correctional institutions at a much lower cost. Another popular and effective concept is to offer reentry programs that provide a broad range of services for offenders and ensure offender accountability.

• BJA will actively promote police-community corrections partnerships that provide a higher level of supervision and accountability on the part of the offender.

• BJA will support OJP reentry programs that seek to provide the needed training, treatment, and supervision that offenders need when they reenter our communities.

• We will work to provide the tools, resources, and technical assistance that rural probation and parole officers need.

• We will develop guidance materials and other information to help community corrections officers and administrators who wish to replicate community correctional facilities or programs.

• Along with national associations and officers in the field, BJA will work to develop model assessment tools and to create dispositional reports that are comprehensive and responsive to the needs of courts.

• BJA will work with professionals to share promising strategies and partnerships that help offenders with mental health issues.

• BJA will also provide information on promising practices and creative solutions in pre- and post-adjudication community-based treatment options.

• In coordination with the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, BJA will invite nationally recognized experts to provide insight and advice on the best ways for us to disseminate useful tools and information to the community corrections profession.

Related Publications

Emerging Judicial Strategies for the Mentally Ill in the Criminal Caseload: Mental Health Courts in Fort Lauderdale, Seattle, San Bernardino, and Anchorage PDF or ASCII

This monograph describes the emergence of the mental health court strategy in four jurisdictions that have pioneered the concept.

Resources for Mother-Child Community Corrections

This resource directory is for program managers, agencies, and individuals who are involved in planning, developing, and implementing programs that serve mothers who have been under criminal-justice supervision—or diverted from the justice system—and their children.

Topics in Community Corrections

This publication provides a list of community corrections publications produced or supported by the National Institute of Corrections, an agency within the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons.

To search for other BJA publications, visit our Publications database.

Related Web Sites

American Correctional Association

American Probation and Parole Association

International Community Corrections Association

For more links, search our Related Web Sites database.

Training

For detailed information on BJA-sponsored training and technical assistance initiatives, search our Training and Technical Assistance database.