Use of Community Corrections and the Impact of Prison and Jail Crowding on Sentencing

• NCJ Number: 130863
• Author(s): D Diroll
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 49 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)
• Corporate Author: Ohio Governor's Office of Criminal Justice Services
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

A survey of 469 Ohio judges with criminal jurisdiction solicited information on their use of community corrections as alternatives to prison or jail sentences and on their consideration of prison and jail crowding as a factor in sentence selection.

Abstract

The response rate of 55 percent (260) included 107 common pleas judges, 118 municipal court judges, and 35 county court judges. The common pleas judges generally viewed prison as the appropriate sanction for most violent and many repeat offenders. Community corrections programs were typically used for nonviolent, low-level felons with short criminal histories. The most popular community corrections alternatives to prison for felons still involved incarceration periods, albeit for less time than full prison sentences. Shock probation was used more for the high-level felons than other community corrections options. Scarcity, not opposition, accounts for lack of greater use of community corrections by judges. Municipal and county court judges were more likely to use community corrections options in sentencing misdemeanants than common pleas judges were for felons. A small majority (53 percent) of common pleas judges said they are not affected by prison crowding in sentencing, since they are not authorized to consider it as a factor in sentencing.