Alternatives

To Incarceration
Criminal punishment has four goals:
• Rehabilitation- Fix the offender and bad habits which
lead to recidivism
• Incapacitation- Secure the community from further
criminal actions of the offender
• Retribution- Make the offender pay for what they did
• Deterrence- Scare other offenders away from
committing similar acts by making the sentence harsh

Four goals of punishment

• Incarceration has been the traditional mode of
punishment in America
• Alternatives to incarceration are usually only
considered for lesser crimes, if they are
considered at all
• Alternatives include: Day Reporting, Probation,
Parole, Work Release, Residential Rehabilitation
and Electronic Home Monitoring (Kushlan, 1996)

Incarceration & Alternatives

• Incarceration alone does not work
• Incarceration is costly, It costs nearly $79 per
day to house an inmate.
• Incarceration serves mostly to incapacitate and
pay retribution, it does not rehabilitate offenders,
and its deterrent effects are minimal against
hardened criminals.

Reasons alternatives should be

considered
Incarceration, when used alone, still has a high
recidivism rate
Therefore alternative methods may be better at
fighting crime

Alternatives to Incarceration
• Treatment and monitoring while allowing an
offender to maintain employment is the most
effective way to lower recidivism rates.

Problems solved by alternatives

to incarceration
• Diverting non violent offenders to community
supervision programs also frees up prison beds
needed to house violent offenders, and can offer
budget makers additional resources for other
pressing public priorities. (Alemi, Ph.D., &
Taxman, Ph.D.)

More space and more money

• Research shows that strong community
supervision programs for lower-risk, non-violent
offenders cost significantly less than
incarceration
• when appropriately resourced and managed,
can cut recidivism by as much as 30 percent
(Riordan, 2009)

Alternatives are cheaper and

more effective
• Electronic Home Monitoring, even when
tracked by gps transponder costs as little as $12
•   day. This is the most costly community
per
supervision option, and it still comes in at $67
cheaper per day than incarceration (Norman-
Eady, 2007).  

Costs Cont’d
• It costs more per day to manage prison inmates
than to supervise offenders in the community. 
The reported average inmate cost was $79 per
day, or nearly $29,000 per year.
• The average cost of managing an offender in
the community ranged from $3.42 per day for
probationers to $7.47 per day for parolees, or
about $1,250 to $2,750 a year.

Costs of Incarceration compared

to alternatives
• Alternatives to incarceration rehabilitate
offenders and reduce recidivism while costing
tax payers less
• Alternatives to incarceration are an attractive
option for corrections departments, but they still
lack in some areas.

Alternatives work well for rehab

but lack in other areas
• The biggest selling point to corrections officials
is the cost of incarceration vs. the cost of
alternative programs. When community safety is
at risk, cost should not be the deciding factor on
what to do with an offender.
• Sometimes incarceration is the best option for
offenders from the community perspective as
well as the professional perspective.

Cost vs. Quality

• Offenders are no longer welcome members of
society by definition, and therefore the
community may not want the offender to be a
part of it
• It reflects poorly on the corrections department
when an offender is released into the
community and then afforded the chance to
offend again
• This means, in the community’s eyes,
alternatives to incarceration do not pay
adequate retribution to the offender.
Community backlash when
offenders avoid incarceration
 •Americans value retribution and incapacitation
more so than rehabilitation
•This is evidenced by the fact that the U.S.
incarcerates more people than any other country
in the world.

Community Backlash Cont’d

• Beyond community concern there are legitimate
security concerns when an offender is not
incarcerated.
• Work Release programs are notorious for having
offenders fail to check in at the end of the day.
• When that offender fails to return is the only time
the work release program knows an offender is
missing, if they leave in the morning an escapee
could have ten hours of time to run before
anyone noticed they were missing.

Further problems
• Those who are on probation pose an even greater
security risk because their monitoring is more
infrequent.
• Probationers have greater than a 1 in 3 chance of
having their probation revoked for re-offending
(Maxwell, Bynum, Gray, & Combs, 2000) .
• If more than thirty three percent of offenders re-offend
when released, the community is that much more
dangerous then it would be if these offenders were
incarcerated.

More problems
They should not be released from prision early
especially if the have committed a harsh crime.
Why give them the opportunity
to commit another crime

Cons to incaceration
 •Even if an offender is deemed to not be a
security risk and they may thrive in the
community, probation and parole are more
overcrowded than jails
•Where jails by law can reach full capacity but
have a maximum legal capacity before their
inmates are shipped to less crowded facilities, a
probation officer has no maximum caseload.
•The already overworked probation officers are
further burdened by offenders who could just as
easily serve jail time and be done.

Probation and parole are as

overcrowded as jails
The positives of alternative treatment methods are
that they more readily serve the rehabilitation
goals of punishment.
The downside is that to do so these methods
sacrifice incapacitation and retribution.
Incarceration has a more deterrent effect but
neither option has a strong deterrent effect on the
criminal populace.

Pros vs. Cons

• The recommendation of this group would be to classify
all low risk offenders and separate them from the high
risk offenders.
• High risk offenders should remain incarcerated for the
purposes of community security and retribution for their
crimes.
• Offenders who are less of a security risk should be
given the option of alternative treatment methods
rather than incarceration, so they may rehabilitate
themselves and reclaim or better their stake in society.

Analysis
•Anderson, D.C. (1997/98). Sensible Justice: alternatives to prison. New York, NY: The New
Press

•Carol S. Steiker
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.5/steiker.html

•James Q. Whitman Oxford University Press

Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide between America and Europe

•Kushlan, P.K. (1996). Alternatives to incarceration. Retrieved from

http://www.mrsc.org/govdocs/P54-1996courtsdy.pdf

•Maxwell, S, Bynum, T, Gray, K, & Combs, T. (Ed.). (2000). Examining recivism in michigan.
American Correctional Association: Cengage Learning.
•Norman-Eady, S. (2007, January 24). Electronic monitoring of probationers and parolees.
Retrieved from http://www.cga.ct.gov/2007/rpt/2007-R-0096.htm

Reference
Riordan, J. (2009, March 02). 1 in 31 u.s. adults are behind bars, on parole or
probation. Retrieved from
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=49398

Too many offenders strain ranks of probation officers Sunday, June 01, 2008
http://www.salisburypost.com/Area/060108-probation-main

To cut costs, send inmates to college Jan 21, 2010 By Chon Noriega
http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/to-cut-costs-send-inmates-to-college-
152131.aspx

Why We’re So Tough on Crime

References Cont’d