NCJ Number
189823
Date Published
November 2000
Length
26 pages
Annotation
This document examines corrections costs, whether citizens are receiving the most benefits from their correctional dollars, ways to improve corrections effectiveness, why inadequate funding for community corrections is a problem in most places, and what can be done to improve the quality and availability of community corrections options.
Abstract
The discussion notes that more than half the States increased their correctional expenditures by more than 100 percent in the past decade, mainly due to increased jail and prison populations. Accelerated and disproportionate funding for prisons, police, and courts adversely impacted rehabilitation and educational programs in prisons and jails, as well as community corrections programs. The involvement of three levels of government and multiple agencies in corrections complicates the analysis of correctional expenditures. Steps that leaders can take to help improve correctional cost allocations and rehabilitative correctional programs include reassessing the components of correctional expenditures, reassessing the goals of correctional expenditures, funding programs that are effective and requiring them to meet performance standards, developing systems to manage unnecessary growth in expenditures, involving the public in decisions attending to special populations that can be safely supervised in the community, and integrating budget and appropriations strategies to balance expenditures. Figures and list of the members of the Center for Community Corrections