Community Correctional Programs

There are many things that I learned from this course, especially about community correction programs. I am from Florida, and we have such programs in our region. The primary purpose of these correctional programs is to prevent future criminal behavior through surveillance, rehabilitation, and community reintegration. The programs also serve to ease institutional crowding and cost as well as address the needs of the victims through restorative justice. Restorative justice seeks to repair harm by providing an opportunity for those harmed and those who take responsibility for the harm to communicate about and address their needs in the aftermath of a crime. The primary philosophy is to help individuals understand how their old behavior has been problematic (places and people to avoid that put them at risk of offending) and how offenders can establish new supportive relationships and ways of behaving. Synthetic officers use motivational interviewing and positive rapport and are also firm and fair with offenders.

I believe that restorative justice is the best way to go, especially for young offenders, as some commit crimes because they want to survive. Some of these behaviors can be corrected if the offender is passed through various behavioral changing programs, changing their irrational judgements, to reasonable individuals who own their mistakes and change for the better. The first step to behavior change is accepting that you have a problem, and this is what the community correctional programs aim to accomplish, giving the young defendants a chance for a new life. The community programs also help in the reintegration of offenders in the community, helping them become responsible beings and not engage in crime in the future. There is a difference between juvenile and adult programming in Florida in that adults require more time to change their behavior. Since they are not easily accepted by society, they take a long time serving in the community correctional programs.