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Washington Post editorial on "Repeat offenders" and best practices

By Douglas A. Berman

This morning's Washington Post includes this interesting editorial headlined "Repeat offenders."  Here are excerpts: The numbers are staggering.  Some 5.1 million individuals are out on probation or parole. If national trends hold up, roughly 40 percent of them will be returned to prison for a future offense.  Yet many of the approaches relied on by state and local corrections officials to keep prisoners from committing new offenses are not just ineffective but counterproductive. Take, for instance, community supervision of inmates deemed at low risk of reoffending. When these parolees are sentenced to halfway houses and other relatively rigid forms of community supervision, their tendency to commit new offenses increases.  That is because they often are forced to spend a significant part of their day at the facility -- time that would be better spent with family, obtaining skills or seeking employment...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 28, 2011 (boomark / email).