Use of Intermediate Sanctions
- Residential community-based sanctions are a better way to treat and rehabilitate offenders. The negative impact of imprisonment on offenders is widely documented. Traditional incarceration does little to improve the life situation of the offender and long stints behind bars are negatively correlated with the likelihood that an inmate will lead a productive, law-abiding life upon release. Intermediate sanctions provide a supervised environment that better facilitates the administration of treatment options while eliminating the stigma of prior incarceration.
- Residential community-based sanctions require effort and productivity on the part of the offender. Programs such as boot camps and work release centers eliminate a great deal of the ‘idle time’ associated with incarceration by coupling full days of work or activity with educational and self-improvement programming after the day is completed.
- Residential community-based sanctions are a cost effective alternative to imprisonment. While more costly than other community-based sanctions such as probation or community service, the expenditure for an offender in residential treatment is less than that for an offender in a traditional secure facility. Even if cost savings are not substantial, the benefits associated with non-institutional sanctions (i.e. reductions in recidivism, restitution to victims) are seen by many to offset the associated costs.
- Residential community-based sanctions are seen as ‘punitive’ for offenders while at the same time being productive. Many Americans favor incarceration because of the perceived punishment (or ‘just desserts’) that offenders receive by having certain of their liberties removed. These same citizens then are critical of correctional systems because inmates ‘sit around getting 3 meals a day and a roof over their heads’ funded by tax dollars. By requiring inmates to be employed or to otherwise provide some service to society (i.e. trash pickup along highways, cleaning public facilities) the public is mollified to some degree because inmates are 'earning their keep.'
- For the most part, policy makers support residential community-based sanctions because they allow politicians to be simultaneously ‘tough on crime’ and fiscally responsible. By directing a portion of those convicted of offenses each year away from incarceration and to an alternative sanction, politicians are, to a degree, using evidence provided by criminologists and public policy scholars advocating the decreased use of imprisonment. At the same time, by being proponents of 'tough' penalties, lawmakers stay in the good graces of their citizenry, a majority of which support harsher penalties for criminal offenders.