What are the primary goals of community-based sanctions? What criteria are used to determine the effectiveness of various approaches to community-based sanctions? Please provide one real-life example of an effective sanction, citing evidence of effectiveness
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Community-based sanctions follow different approaches based on the intended outcomes. For example, probation residential centers are meant to train offenders to gain job skills so that they can find something to do in the community. Therefore, the criteria used to assess the effectiveness of these approaches depends on the intended outcomes. One criterion is to measure the rate of recidivism. That is, if the rate of convicted offenders getting back into criminal activities has reduced, then the program is said to be effective. Another criterion is to find out whether the number of inmates is reducing or increasing. Since one of the goals of community-based sanctions is to reduce the number of people in prisons, a reduced number of inmates shows that an approach is effective. A good example of effective sanction was the supervision program in Wisconsin Community Corrections that has been effective by reducing the number of people in jails (Williams, Schiraldi, & Bradner, 2019).
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