Alternatives to Incarnceration

Alternatives to Incarceration

Name

Institution

The populations in prisons around the world are increasing at an alarming rate. This has been resulting in burdening of governments (American Bar Association, 2007). Prisons should have the capability of achieving certain objectives. That is punishing offenders, keeping them in prisons hence preventing them to engage in further wrongdoings, and ensure that there is rehabilitation. The objective of rehabilitation has been an objective that prisons have been unable to attain for a long time. Instead of rehabilitating prisoners, there has been a cycle of criminalizing them further.

Alternatives to incarceration can range from abolition of incarceration, transformative justice, or restorative justice. In an example, when incarcerating parents, there should be a consideration of their parenting and influence on their children. Mothers that have positive influence on their children should receive minimum sentences so that they can care for their children lest they become criminals. When dealing with minors, the justice department should consider restorative justice such as boot camps or military programs. This will ensure that there will be no criminalization of minors further. In addition, such approaches attain the rehabilitative objectives while at the same time decongesting prisons.

Probation is when the courts place adult offenders under supervision in the community. Generally, a probation agency will be part of the arrangements and it will be in lieu of incarceration (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2006). However, some justice systems prefer having a split sentence. This means that the individuals have to serve part of their time in prison and the rest on probation. Probationers may be on either an active or an inactive status. When in an inactive status, persons are not under direct supervision and they do not have to regularly report to their supervisors (Patchin, 2004). The reverse of this is true about active probationers. Parole, on the other hand, is the release of prisoners to the public so that they can serve the remainder of their sentences in the community. The release may be by either through the prison board or by the provisions of a statute. Individuals that are in parole should be in constant communication with their parole officers. Similar to the case of probation depending on their crimes, parole persons may be either active or inactive. Active parole means that they have to report to the parole officers while inactive does not require the same.

Shock probation is a policy used by the justice system whereby the a convicted offender will serve a portion of their jail time and they are released on probation. The same case applies to shock parole (Patchin, 2004). The hope of the justice