President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice

Corrections

The Crime Commission's Task Force on Corrections made 22 recommendations. Most of these focused on attempts to curb the recidivism rate and represented “practical, incremental steps toward a system capable of balancing incapacitation of dangerous offenders with sensible programs for the over 98% of offenders who return to community life” (Nelson et al., 1997, p. 1).

Rehabilitation, however, was not the Task Force on Corrections' main goal; instead, the focus was on reintegration. Its members believed that crime and delinquency were symptoms of the failure and disorganization of both the individual and the community. “The task of corrections therefore,” as stated by the Task Force on Corrections,

For corrections to meet this task, changes had to be made not just in the individual offender, but in the community and in its institutions as well. The recommendations for implementing these changes fell under three general categories: community-based corrections, correctional institutions, and correctional decision making.

The commission sought to shift penal policy from prisons to community-based corrections. As commission member James Vorenberg (1972) put it:

Prisons, the commission reasoned, were only to be for the most violent and dangerous of offenders; the majority of offenders would be better served by probation or parole. Thus, they recommended that more probation and parole officers be added (based on the ratio of 35 offenders per officer), and that these “services should be available in all jurisdictions for felons, juveniles, and those adult misdemeanants who need or can profit from community treatment” (President's Commission, 1967a, p. 166).

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