Privatizing Discretion: “Rehabilitating” Treatment in Community Corrections

In the past decade, private sector involvement in punishment has been vigorously renewed and expanded. In documenting the growth of this trend, the literature has focused on normative issues related to privately operated prisons. Noticeably missing from the privatization debate is discussion of community corrections. This article seeks to fill this void by examining a rapidly growing trend in community corrections, namely the use of private treatment agencies to provide mandated counseling services to probationers. These services can include sex offense, substance abuse, domestic violence, life skills, impulse control, and anger management counseling. The ethical problems posed by the convergence of rehabilitation, discretion, and profit are raised through concrete examples of privatization's effects on both offenders and the control system. Policy recommendations also are provided to establish more principled treatment sanctioning in the community.