NCJ Number
139613
Journal
Corrections Compendium Volume: 15 Issue: 7 Dated: (September 1990) Pages: 1,4-7
Date Published
1990
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article describes the characteristics and benefits of day reporting centers (DRC's), which constitute a hybrid of intensive probation supervision, house arrest, and early release.
Abstract
The concept of the DRC was imported from Great Britain and launched in Springfield, Mass., in October 1986. Participants serve their last week or months of jail still in the government's custody but technically on their own. By presenting themselves daily to the program's offices after work or after school, they still benefit from traditional in-jail services that range from Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, to financial planning, to General Educational Development classes, and to group therapy. As the participants progress in their constructive behaviors, they receive more privileges. In contrast to jail, they can plan their own day and pick their own activities. Electronic monitoring is used but is not essential to the program. Eighty-three percent of participants have completed the Springfield DRC program successfully, despite the fact that 85 percent of the participants have had drug and alcohol problems, and 4 out of 5 had little job experience and no job prospects when they started the program. Not one graduate of the five Massachusetts DRC's has committed a violent crime during or after program participation. Of the 20 percent who fail in the program, most have done so because the program has detected drug and alcohol use. The DRC has the advantage of providing structure to the daily lives of participants as well as services based on individual needs while saving much of the cost of incarceration. The article offers suggestions for starting a DRC, for determining who should participate, and for planning and operating the program.