NCJ Number
213497
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 34 Issue: 1 Dated: January/February 2006 Pages: 39-50
Date Published
January 2006
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This study compared the opinions of Kentucky parole and probation officers to those of the offenders they supervised concerning the amount of alternative sanctions offenders would serve to avoid 1 year of imprisonment.
Abstract
Results revealed significant differences between the perceptions of officers and the perceptions of offenders regarding the “exchange rate” of alternative sanctions for imprisonment. Probation and parole officers generally thought offenders would be willing to do longer amounts of alternative sanctions to avoid imprisonment than offenders themselves stated they would do. The findings indicate that officers considered imprisonment a more stringent sanction than did the offenders. Among the implications of the findings is the observation that some offenders think the likelihood of failing to meet the requirements of the alternative sanction is so high that they would rather go to prison immediately than end up in prison after failing. The authors suggest that a mentoring programming for new offenders under supervision might increase success rates. Participants were 612 offenders recruited via purposive sampling from 7 probation/parole officers in Kentucky and 295 probation and parole officers recruited via e-mailed survey questionnaire. All participants completed a survey questionnaire that offered descriptions of nine alternative sanctions and asked participants to indicate how many months of alternative they were willing to serve to avoid a 12-month imprisonment in a medium-security prison. Statistical analyses, including the calculations of means and standard deviations, compared the responses of both groups. Follow-up research should extend the analysis of perceived exchange rates to judges, legislators, and criminal justice officials. Tables, appendix, references