NCJ Number
198922
Journal
Community Corrections Report Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Dated: September/October 2002 Pages: 81-82,93,95
Editor(s)
Carl Reddick
Date Published
September 2002
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article examines three steps on how community corrections agencies can become mindful and reliable agencies, thereby reducing the contribution by community corrections organizations in raising the stakes for increased recidivism in the form of friendly fire.
Abstract
The issue of friendly fire is one of casualties unintentionally inflicted. This may help understand the 6,400 murders, 7,400 rapes, 10,400 assaults, and the 17,000 robberies perpetrated by probationers returned to State prison in 1991 as a correctional instance of friendly fire. In the field of community corrections there has never been any research on a subject such as friendly fire or how community corrections could inadvertently increase the number of victims of crime in the community. It has been identified that when program integrity breaks down, as supervisors and officers ignore agreed upon and empirically tested guidelines for operation and inappropriate populations squeeze out targeted ones, unexpected and undesired behavioral consequences can result. The problem with most public organizations is that they have been structured to tolerate and even deny significant amounts of failure. There is the need to introduce mindfulness into community corrections. The approach to community corrections is a mindful, social approach to reliability. There are three steps that seem to be the most crucial in getting the process of mindfulness underway. The first, most difficult step is the desire; the wanting to be reliable. Once an organizational commitment to mindfulness and reliability is in place, the next step is to recognize the need for balance and prevent the cultural pendulum from swinging to far in the new direction, creating a whole new set of blind spots. The third and final step to organizational reliability is that the lever of mindful cultural change must be applied with the greatest force. There needs to be cooperative action. It is no longer affordable to approach community corrections in an unreliable and mindless fashion. The stakes, whether measured in terms of unacceptable rates of recidivism or the victims of terrorism are too high. It is inexcusable that the structure and operation of community corrections may have contributed to raising those stakes in the form of friendly fire. References