Probation and Parole in the United States

Probation and Parole in the United States:
Changes in the Correctional System since World War II
Scott Lohr
Pennsylvania Highlands Community College

Abstract Employee security problems and high risk caseloads progressively will move agents away from customary probation ideas of casework in the direction of ideas lined up with control or disciplinary beliefs. This study analyzes how the role of probation and parole has altered and what the future will be like counting on how we respond to the alterations at hand. This study also reviews changes in the criminal policies that have transpired.

Probation and Parole in the United States:
Changes in the Correctional System since World War II Under Florida law, the Department of Corrections is to keep the public safe and out of harm’s way, supply a protected and friendly environment for employees and criminals; work in joint venture with the community to add programs and services to lawbreakers; and oversee criminals at a grade of security appropriate with the hazards they present (Florida Department of Corrections, 1992). These duties pose marvelous trials for the employee’s management of the Florida Department of Corrections and the corrupt justice system as a whole. To have an insignificant impact on these matters, the system must make some foremost changes in how corrupt justice is distributed. This is necessary as the crime rates continue to rise; as courts misplace their influence in deterring crime by equalizing quick, rigid sentences; as correctional organizations accept inmates today and let them go tomorrow to ease overcrowding; and as criminals become more dangerous. The penalties of our failure to arise the surge of crime are frightening. An article in USA Today (1991) stated:
Probation agencies have become seriously under-staffed just as they are being depended upon more strongly than any issue in history; probation, rather than prison, is the most widespread pattern of punishment. Probation agents have become less and less engaged in their usual function, more connected to communal work and are more absorbed with law enforcement, following down those who have defied the periods of flexibility. Regardless of an astounding increase in the number of institutional facilities, an exceptional number of criminals have been put under strict watch in the community. The Florida Department of Corrections has more than 100,000 felony criminals under supervision in Florida communities. If it were not for overcrowding, numerous of these criminals would be assisting long sentences in state organizations. Regulation enforcement, the court, the correctional system, and probation and parole have the same duties for the malfunction of the criminal justice system. The difficulties documented above are huge. To deal with these difficulties, much of what we do and how we do it will need to be different. Many inside and outside alterations currently have been made to respond to the individual safety concerns of probation/parole agents in Florida: adjustment of agencies to provide for larger employee security, soft body armor, and firearms. This study task calculates areas where change is required, as well as obstacles that stand in the way of change. According to Edward W. Sieh (1990),
Over the past so many years, probation communities have grown to more than 18% compared to about 15% in jail and prison communities and almost 13% in the number of paroles. Close to 2/3 of the complete correctional community was under probation supervision in the community at the end of 1985. Sieh decided that huge alterations in the criminal community have led to alterations in sentencing, as well as in how officers are expected or needed to do their job. Twenty-five percent of convicted felony criminals get probation. Other judgments encompass complete supervision and shock probation. Sieh’s study recognized two essential forms for overseeing criminals—“remedy” and “justice”. The remedy model demonstrates customary casework and rehabilitation, and assesses change within the system. Sieh attacked the remedy mode, showing that it is inherently violent and unjust. It supposes a power over the impulse of criminals, out of capacity to their incorrect doing; it ignores information about the communal rather than therapeutic basis of crimes, and it treats clients as absolute objects of disciplinary policy to manipulate at a whim. The justice standard deals with the increasing occurrence of punishment. Sieh accepts that the standard was made from public appeal for belief of punishment with the smallest risk to the community. In his description of the justice standard, the officer is not at all worried about assisting alterations in the criminal, court instructions become the direction for supervision. Criminal success or failure counts upon his/her agreement with the conditions of supervision, and not the blame of the officer or the system. Complete supervision, in his outlook, is a process of the justice standard. Sieh assumed that the system is moving firmly nearer to a disciplinary one—the justice standard. He questioned contemporaries in the field to gaze for equity. Harris, Clear, and Baird (1989) discovered that the probation system completely extends to support remedy beliefs. Morran and Linder (1985) were in unison. They found more considerably, that electronic devices, sophisticated drug and alcohol area testing kits, and computerized information of new arrests are assisting to a larger focus of the law enforcement duty. Many of the criminals who carry out crimes are presently under supervision. Collaboration between regulation enforcement and probation would increase effectiveness. At the same time, supply for larger security for probation officers who might otherwise be needed to make late evening calls to tough positions without backup would not hurt either. Ten years before, supervising the whereabouts of a criminal by the use of an electronic monitor emerged light years away. Cold War undercover operations employed the use of electrical monitoring apparatus. The Florida corrections system has intensely cooperated in a supervising program for more than ten years. Today, 800 criminals are under electrical monitoring oversight. The courts have vigorously approved the use of the apparatus. It is expected that the electrical monitoring will be utilized at elevated rates in the future. Between 1984 and 1988 the probation caseload went higher from 1.74 million to 2.36 million individuals (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1989). Numerous administrations have furthermore noticed that the probation populations are criminals who often begin with a high risk of threat to the probation agents (Guynes, 1988, Petersilla, Turner, Kahan, & Paterson, 1985; Snyder, 1986). It is without question very necessary that officers are supplied with an access of security to make sure that they don’t become victims. The future is ours to shape and change, or to just let it occur. Given a perception of much important advancement, we should start to increase the speed of some of the more attractive future anticipations and slow up those with less attractive anticipations. To adjust the course of unattractive purposes, the setting up of balancing standards and practices will be needed.