The effectiveness of two types of sanctions criminology essay

Community-sentence appeared like other sanction in the United States in 1960, to prison or fines for less serious types of offenses (DUI, petty theft, nonviolent offenses). In the United States, it is also used in additional to other sanctions such as much known probation or mandatory fines. Longan & Farrington (1998), Lynch (2002), Tonry (1998) present that in the United States, the justice system has a greater inclination to use incarceration even for less serious offenses, so incarcerated offenders cannot be compared with those receiving CS sentences. Little research has been done on the intervention and effectiveness of such programs. Only one study was published in the United States which showed CS effectiveness regard to incarceration. The study was conducted by McDonald (1986) and examinated the Bronx Community Service Sentencing Project in New York, where the result had not statistical significant differences; he did not find persuasive evidence that CS sentences had influence on recidivism. European and US research suggests that CS does not reduce recidivism when it is used in a link with short-term prison sentences. (Tonry, 1998). The purpose of this study is if CS sentence is more efficient than criminal fines in the reduction of recidivism. This study answers to three questions; First answer is if offenders who receive a CS sentence have a lower probability of recidivism than those who receive monetary fines. The second answer is which are the factors related to the probability of in-program recidivism among a number of offenders sentenced to complete CS sentences. The last is if this study tries to determine, whether after receiving a CS sentence, re-offending rates past-program participation is reduced comparative to the use of criminal fines. Independent variables used in this study are race, criminal history, age, gender, offense type, sentence severity, sentence type, and time at risk. Dependent variable measures only recidivism rate that comes after the offender participates in the process, even if it was successfully completed or not. Bivariate analysis results present that non-White offenders have a higher rate of re-offending and re-offenders with criminal history compared with offenders charged with violent and property crime that are less likely to re-offend after receiving the sentence. Independent variables such as gender, age, sentence severity, sentence type, and time at risk were not more important related to the likelihood of recidivism at the multivariate level. The result is that CS sentences are at least as effective as traditional fines in terms of any recidivism, but it cannot be generalized due to many differences between the two groups. In the community studied in this article, the conclusions are that the offenders sentenced to complete CS hours not were significantly less likely to recidivate and additionally they bring much money to their community. CritiqueNot many studies have been done in the U. S., most were made in Europe regarding to the effectiveness of CS sentences and therefore it cannot be generalized and apply to the United States. The justice system and communities in Europe are different from the U. S. This study has both good and weak points. A good point of this study is the sentences compared, because in the study done by McDonald (1986) he compared CS with the incarceration sentence and in this study, the authors compared CS no incarceration sentences with sentence type (criminal fines) and uses recent data. For this study, the authors did not choose an equal number of men and women. Regarding to race, it was done in an area where Whites are predominates. The results cannot be generalized. The utilized data were collected by a single police officer and he chose a small sample of only 200 offenders. This number may be representative neither for the U. S. nor for that community. Another difference between the groups is on average age. The average age for the SC sample is 23 years and 21. 3 years for offenders fined. Offenders in the CS group approximately half (51%) of them had a serious criminal history compared to the second group with only 35. 6%. The most of the CS offenders (85. 3%) were arrested on a drug or alcohol offense when all offenders in the fined sample were charged for the first time DUI offense. Another weakness of this study is that they did not choose the same data for education and employment status. Disproportionality between the two groups is given by the time when the data were collected, for each group of offenders. Time for offenders fined was on average eight months longer than CS offenders. Statistical analyses of recidivism miss to present a significant reduction among CS sentenced offenders because these analyses do not include controls for program completion. In this study, Bouffard and Muftic (2007) used a design and methodology which are more improved than in the existing literature on CS effectiveness, although the most were done overseas or there are outdated. All of those conduct to the lack of generalizability in this country. The study results indicate that in the future researches it must be used a big number of offenders with different races, not predominant White like in this study. They can do their compared research on other types of community-based sanctions and on offenders from other than municipal courts.