NCJ Number
167226
Journal
Crime & Delinquency Volume: 43 Issue: 3 Dated: (July 1997) Pages: 243-259
Date Published
1997
Length
17 pages
Annotation
In the past decade, private treatment agencies have increasingly taken over the task of rehabilitating offenders, and this article examines the use of such agencies to provide mandated counseling services to probationers.
Abstract
In an overburdened penal environment, private treatment agencies can assist the government by providing intermediate sanction options, ensuring offender needs are met, and relieving probation officer role confusion. Mandated counseling services that can be provided by private treatment agencies to probationers include sex offense, substance abuse, domestic violence, life skills, impulse control, and anger management counseling. 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. The potential profitability of offender treatment is illustrated with cost data. Policy recommendations are offered to establish more principled treatment sanctioning in the community. The author concludes offender treatment services should be provided in a way that does not compromise the integrity of community-based sanctioning. 60 references, 2 notes, and 1 table