Rhetoric and Reality: A Critical Appraisal of Community Correctional Programs

Evaluations of many community programs controvert a number of common assumptions about the conditions and effects of noninstitu tional correctional programs. Evidence will be presented in this essay that raises questions about the effectiveness, humaneness, and econo my of community-based programs. Such programs have had, it is argued, a range of undesirable effects on the justice system and soci ety that have not been widely recognized. In particular, there is a ten dency for community programs to extend state control over an in creasing proportion of the population. The validity of conventional explanations of the origins of community-based programs will be dis cussed, and an alternative theoretical framework will be proposed that takes account of the need for the social control apparatus to respond to larger structural exigencies in the advanced capitalist state.