Community Corrections as an Add-on to Imprisonment

Post-Prison Supervision and Sentencing

Generally speaking, post-prison or post-release supervision is virtually any method whereby a corrections or court institution maintains control over individuals recently released from incarceration. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, each depending largely on a state's position on sentencing. Since the 1980s and 1990s, many states have taken a political, “tough-on-crime” stance in election platforms and resulting crime control policy. During this time, state philosophies on sentencing shifted from indeterminate to determinate policies, whereby legislatures began to mandate the lengths of sentences for certain crimes. Several states established sentencing commissions that would deliberate on and then justify certain sentencing guidelines, which were to be followed by judges and prosecutors in sentencing and plea-bargaining phases.

Under the indeterminate sentencing system, judges sentence offenders to a range of months or years in prison. For instance, for a case of robbery a judge might sentence someone to a minimum of three years and a maximum of seven. Within this range, the time of release from incapacitation is typically determined by a discretionary parole board. The board bases its decision to grant a release that is either before or up to the maximum date of the person's original sentence. As a result, the use of parole and other methods of community corrections in an indeterminate sentencing system is not normally understood as an add-on to imprisonment.

With the shift toward determinate sentencing, two decision-making power structures were substantially diminished, and some were even eliminated. The first was the discretionary power of the courtroom, which shifted from the judges to the prosecutors, as judges were forced to abide by sentencing mandates such as mandatory minimums (the forcible nature of which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, though strict guidelines still remain), three-strikes legislation, and truth-in-sentencing laws. Subsequently, the practice of plea bargaining became the primary tool in sentencing. Along with the prescribed sentencing guidelines, the length and conditions of post-release supervision became a common element of the bargaining and general sentencing phases.

The second structure to be diminished was the discretionary parole board. It was largely necessary for the indeterminate sentencing systems to have a discretionary parole board because of the fluid nature of a person's sentence; however, abolishment of sentence fluidity subsequently eliminated the need for a parole board to determine the duration and intensity of post-release control. Instead, in determinate sentencing systems the post-release supervision is set by the judge during the initial sentencing and often is also based on a set of legislatively mandated guidelines. In such a system, post-release supervision can take the form of virtually any community corrections conditions and framework, ranging from simple parole officer supervision to halfway houses and even therapeutic communities. The implementation of mandatory community corrections clauses in the sentencing phase thus makes community corrections an add-on to imprisonment. Many emphasize that this use of community corrections constitutes more of an additional penalty (overincarceration) than a method of reducing recidivism.

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