8.2. Intermediate Sanctions
David Carter and Kate McLean
Community corrections as a whole has changed dramatically over the last half-century. Due to a rapid and overwhelming increase of the offender population – largely due to policy changes – we have witnessed an immense increase in the use of community sanctions at the community level, including probation and parole. It has only been within the last 10 years that community correctional populations have begun to decrease.
While much attention has been paid to the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States, a majority of individuals under correctional control are supervised in the community. As of 2022, roughly 1.9 million individuals are incarcerated in the United States – while over 3.7 million are under some form of community-level control. [1] The sheer volume of individuals under community correction is rarely noted, but has important resonance for offender recidivism, reincarceration, and life chances more generally. The public may view probation or parole as concessions to offenders, but in fact, these methods of supervision have the power to dramatically improve offenders’ success – or to send them to jail or prison.
As we have discussed, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a fundamental shift in corrections. This is largely due to the “Nothing Works” dogma in the area of rehabilitation. In turn, there was a nationwide turn toward the use of “institutional corrections,” or prison and jail sentences. Yet, when parole is available, the use of institutional corrections has dramatic implications for community corrections, as incarcerated offenders are ultimately released to the supervision of a parole officer. Moreover, as the U.S. prison population has bulged, many policymakers have started to realize the value and necessity of community sanctions for relieving an overcrowded, and ineffective, system.
At the same time, community corrections has also evolved in line with the “punitive turn” in criminal justice. The last 40 years has seen the rise of what are often termed “intermediate sanctions,” or punishments in between traditional probation (offender supervision in community, with behavioral restrictions) and traditional incarceration (continuous offender detention in prison or jail). Examples include house arrest, electronic monitoring, shock incarceration (incarceration for a very short period), and intensive supervision probation (with more regular PO check-ins or daily drug-testing.)
What Would You Do?
As stated before, there are three primary goals for corrections: to punish the offender, to rehabilitate the offender, and to protect society. Often the first and third goals take precedent, displacing and even opposing the goal of rehabilitation. Here is an example of how this might happen.
Imagine a man, who is married, has a couple of kids, a stable blue-collar job, a house/mortgage, and is living just a little bit better than a paycheck to paycheck. We can call him J