The Price of Punishment: Public Spending for Corrections in New York by Douglas Mcdonald

Author:Douglas Mcdonald [Mcdonald, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781000304992
Google: L2GlDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 52648172
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Strengthening Probation Services

Developing formalized procedures for differential supervision might help the probation department better “target” its scarce resources, but there are other alternatives for augmenting the manpower available for assisting the probationer. These include the expanded use of volunteers, the transformation of the probation officer’s role into a community resource broker, handing the job of presentence investigation over to the courts, and restructuring the funding of probation so that the state assumes a greater share of the cost. Closer evaluation of all these alternatives is needed to determine their cost-effectiveness.

Volunteers for probation: Several probation agencies across the country have enlisted the help of volunteers. Indeed, probation began as a service provided by volunteers. The New York City department has successfully used volunteers, but only in a limited way. The volunteer organizations have included the American Red Cross, the National Council of Jewish Women, the AFL-CIO, Alcoholics Anonymous, and various colleges and universities. The EDC report noted that the volunteer program is “impressive but very small.” Some branch officers used no volunteers, and others used them for relatively short periods of time.27 Expanding the use of volunteers should be explored as a means of relieving the burden on probation officers.

Community resource managers: Another strategy for expanding the resources available for probation assistance is to transform the probation officer into a broker for services already provided by outside agencies. Probation supervision has traditionally been dominated by the casework approach, which assigns the officer the sole responsibility for treating the client. The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals finds that this approach “no longer meets the needs of the criminal justice system, the probation system, or the offender.” The commission notes: “While some probation officers still will have to carry out counseling duties, most probation officers can meet the goals of the probation services system more effectively in the role of community resource manager. This means that the probation officer will have primary responsibility for meshing a probationer’s identified needs with a range of available services and for supervising the delivery of those services.”28 This model of probation supervision has been experimented with in some western states but has not yet been definitively evaluated.

In line with this is the proposal that probation officers should actively advise sentencing judges about the availability of community services.29 Presentence reports submitted to the courts seldom identify specific agencies in the community able to provide the needed service. Were this to be done more frequently, it might be possible for sentencing judges to expand their use of alternatives to incarceration.

Several proposals for providing higher quality probation supervision have focused on the broader restructuring of probation agencies. These include shedding activities which are not related to the agencies’ primary criminal justice mission, transferring the responsibility for court-ordered investigations to the courts, and a greater assumption of fiscal and/or management responsibility by the state government.

Severing investigations from supervision: In New York City the capacity to supervise and assist probationers has been weakened by severe cutbacks in funding.

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