research alternative sentencing and criminal sanctions, including diversion, home confinement, community service, work release, and victim compensation in that state. Post a report of your findings, including information about the effectiveness of the alternative sentencing options you identified in the state you chose for your research. Also, respond to the reports of at least two fellow students. Remember - be sure to include reference citations to identify the scholarly research sources consulted to create your primary post.
1) In 2013, Indiana addressed their overcrowded prisons by taking on new legislation in regards to their alternative sentencing. This included allowing more lower level non-violent offenders to be under community corrections while increasing the amount of time being served by those who have committed violent offenses (American Institutes for Research, n.d.).
There are several programs for those offenders who enter community corrections in Indiana. Included in these is a diversion, which is offered to those offenders who have a limited criminal history. Diversion allows the offender to complete specific tasks in exchange for a dismissal of their charges. Statistics show that this program holds a 37% success rate (Gaal, n.d.).
Community service is another option that is given to these offenders. This allows the offender to work on government property or not-for-profit agencies for a set number of hours as decided by a judge, which still being subject to random drug testing. While simple, this program holds a high success rate in Indiana at 60.4% (Wells County Government, n.d.).
Two other programs are home confinement and work release. These programs are very similar in their nature. In both cases, offenders are equipped with an electronic monitoring device. They must then give their supervision officer their schedule in advance, normally only being allowed to go to work and court order services such as Alcoholics Anonymous (Wells County Government, n.d.). These subjects are also subject to random drug testing. The difference between these two is that home confinement is in lieu of prison time while work release is a subject released from prison by the court to work. Another difference can be seen in their success rate, with home confinement showing success 61.1% of the time and work release lowering to 48.5% (Wells County Government, n.d.).
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2) The Illinois State Commission on Criminal Justice and Sentencing Reform provided a report in December of 2015 describing a review of the State's sentencing practices (Sentencing Reform, 2016). Illinois prisons are working at one hundred and fifty percent capacity currently and most of these prisoners are being held for non-violent crimes. There is also proof in statistics, that a lengthy prison term does not help in reducing recidivism.
To combat this problem Illinois is committed to reducing the length of prison stays and has authorized the Illinois Department of Corrections to use the risk and needs assessment tools to decide how to treat and rehabilitate offenders, especially prisoners who were sentenced to twelve months or less (Sentencing Reform, 2016). In addition, a crime victim's fund was started in 1973 and provides for victims of crime to receive financial compensation which can come from restitution paid by the offender as part of his or her sentencing (Helping crime victims, n.d.). Illinois also is making better use of Electronic Monitoring Technology, rehabilitative programming, job training, and re-entry programs for offenders. By the year 2025, this will reduce the amount of prisoners in IDOC by 25 percent for a prison population of 36,209 which will be down from the current population of 48,278 prisoners.
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