Halfway House

History of the Halfway House

From the mid-eighteenth to the early part of the nineteenth century, correctional philosophy in Europe and the United States was dominated by the “classical” deterrence model as espoused by the Italian Cesare Beccaria in his book Essays on Crime and Punishment (1764) (Clear and Cole 2000: 30). This approach assumed that offenders were rational, thinking individuals who exercised free will, and whose punishment should fit their crime accordingly. Punishment applied with certainty, swiftness, and proportionate severity, it was believed, would deter offenders from further criminal activities.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, explanations regarding crime and criminals had shifted to the new paradigm of “positivism” (Curran and Renzetti 2001: Vold et al. 1998). According to Hagan (2002: 127), “criminological positivists emphasize a consensus world view, a focus on the criminal actor rather than the criminal act, a deterministic model (usually biological or psychological in nature), a strong faith in the scientific expert, and a belief in rehabilitation of ‘sick' offenders rather than the punishment of ‘rational' actors” (Hagan 2002: 127). This shift to positivism clearly focused penology on the philosophy of rehabilitation.

When the first halfway house was developed is subject to debate. Residential programs designed to provide transitional services and assistance have existed in the United States since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Originally housing the homeless and the poor, by 1845 these facilities, such as New York's Isaac T. Hopper House (Silverman 2001: 484), had become popular resources for convicted offenders, as they provided prerelease opportunities for individuals to return to society through a structured program with supportive staff members. Similar to parole in that both have been considered early release mechanisms, halfway houses differ in that they have often served as intermediate, transitional programs for inmates who leave prison due to overcrowding and who are paroled following the completion of their sentences in a community-based residential program.

“Residents,” as they were called in order to distinguish them from inmates or ex-convicts, were granted provisional access to the community to pursue vocational, educational, or employment opportunities, as well as to attend specialized treatment programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous. These efforts were consistent with the belief, becoming popular at the time, that criminal behavior was determined by various biological, psychological, environmental, and social factors, and therefore was amenable to remediation through individualized treatment.

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