Mid-Term Flashcards
A nonincarcerative sanction in which offenders serve all or a portion of their sentence in a community.
Community Corrections
The state in which a defendant has been sentenced by a court after having either pleaded guilty or been found guilty by a judge or jury. Being adjudicated is equivalent to a conviction.
Post-Adjudication
The state in which a defendant has not yet pleaded guilty or been found guilty by a judge or jury. Said defendant is either in a pretrial stage or has been offered deferred adjudication.
Pre-Adjudication
Community supervision of a convicted offender in lieu of incarceration under conditions imposed by a court for a specified period, during which it retains authority to modify those conditions or to resentence said offender if he or she violates those conditions.
Probation
A sentencing philosophy that focuses on consistency for a crime committed, specifying by statute or sentencing guidelines an exact amount or narrow range of time to be served in prison or in a community and mandating a minimum amount of time before an offender is eligible (if at all) for release. Also known as a presumptive, fixed, or mandatory sentence.
Indeterminate Sentencing
A sentencing philosophy that focuses on consistency for a crime committed, specifying by statute or sentencing guidelines an exact amount or narrow range of time to be served in prison or in a community and mandating a minimum amount of time before an offender is eligible (if at all) for release. Also known as a presumptive, fixed, or mandatory sentence.
Determinate Sentencing
Monetary payment deposited with a court to ensure a defendant’s return for the next court date, in exchange for said defendant’s release.
Bail
Court-ordered correctional supervision of a defendant not yet convicted whereby said defendant participates in activities such as reporting, house arrest, and electronic monitoring to ensure appearance at the next court date.
Pretrial Supervision
A spectrum of community supervision strategies that vary greatly in terms of supervision level and treatment capacity, ranging from diversion to shortterm duration in a residential community facility.
Intermediate Sanctions
Any activity or program conducted to prepare prisoners to return safely to a community and to live as law-abiding citizens.
Prisoner Reentry
A program in a minimum-security, community-based or institutional setting for offenders who have spent time in prison and are nearing release. Its focus includes transitioning, securing a job, and reestablishing family connections.
Prerelease Program
Early privileged release from a penal or correctional institution of a convicted offender, in the continual custody of the state, to serve the remainder of his or her sentence under supervision in a community.
Parole
The theory that an offender on community supervision will refrain from committing technical violations and/or new crimes if, after considering the costs and benefits, the consequences for misbehavior are certain and severe enough that the sanctions outweigh the benefits.
Specific Deterrence Theory
A primary goal of the corrections system, and the process in which offenders are exposed to treatment programs and skills training in order to change their thinking processes and behaviors.
Rehabilitation
A theory of rehabilitation that suggests focusing on treating high-risk offenders, matching correctional interventions with criminogenic needs, and implementing treatment according to offenders’ learning styles and personal characteristics.
Risk/Need/Responsivity
Problems, habits, or deficits that are directly related to an individual’s involvement in criminal behavior.
Criminogenic Needs
Various sentencing philosophies and practices that emphasize an offender’s taking of responsibility to repair harm done to a victim and to a surrounding community. It includes forms of victim-offender mediation, reparation panels, circle sentencing, and monetary sanctions.
Restorative Justice
An integrated theory of community supervision that suggests that offender compliance and active participation, along with officer supervision strategies of communication, casework, and leverage are necessary to achieve offender accountability, offender risk/need reduction, and public safety. Change is mediated by offender motivation, parental/significant other support, and officer–client relationship quality.
Participation Process Model
Correctional programs and techniques shown through systematically evaluated research studies to be most effective with offenders.
Evidence-Based Practice
Using stiffer punishment or excessive control for offenders who would ordinarily be sentenced to a lesser sanction.
Net Widening
A return to criminal behavior, variously defined in one of three ways: rearrest, reconviction, or reincarceration.
Recidivism
A monetary penalty imposed arbitrarily at the discretion of a court for an offense.
Amercement
A document issued by a police officer to a juvenile who commits a misdemeanor or status offense that allows the juvenile to complete deferred adjudication or diversion probationary supervision without being formally adjudicated by the juvenile court, in states that allow this practice.
Civil Citation
A recognizance or bond given a court by a defendant before or after conviction, conditioned on his or her being “on good behavior” or on keeping the peace for a prescribed period.
Security
An oral or written request that a court repeal, nullify, or overturn a decision, usually made during or after a trial.
Motion to Quash
An order of a court after a verdict, finding, or plea of guilty that suspends or postpones an imposition or execution of sentence during a period of good behavior.
Suspended Sentence
When an indictment is held in abeyance with neither dismissal nor final conviction, in cases in which the judge wishes to defer adjudication or suspend the sentence.
Laid on File
A Boston bootmaker who was the founder of probation in the United States.
John Augustus
Latin term meaning that the government acts as a “substitute parent” and allows the courts to intervene in cases in which children, through no fault of their own, have been neglected and/or are dependent and in which it is in their best interest that a guardian be appointed for them.
Parens Patriae
An alternative to traditional criminal sentencing or juvenile justice adjudication that provides offenders with a chance to avoid conviction upon successful completion resulting in a dismissal of current charges. Also known as deferred adjudication.
Diversion
Formal written agreement between a state government and local entities that funds counties to implement and operate community corrections programs on a local level.
Community Corrections Acts
A community-supervision philosophy that allows an officer to create therapeutic relationships with clients through counseling and behavior modification, assisting them in living productively in a community.
Casework
Supervision that involves identifying the needs of probationers or parolees and referring them to an appropriate community agency.
Brokerage of Services
A supervision model in which probation or parole officers develop skills and linkages with community agencies in one or two areas only. Supervision under this model is a team effort, each officer utilizing his or her skills and linkages to assist an offender.
Community Resource Management Team Model
A correctional practice based on the concept of just desserts and even-handed punishment. The justice model calls for fairness in criminal sentencing so that all people convicted of a similar offense receive a like sentence. This model of corrections relies on determinate sentencing and/or abolition of parole.
Justice Model
A supervision strategy that emphasizes public safety, accountability, partnerships with other community agencies, within boundaries defined by street intersections or zip code.
Neighborhood-Based Supervision
A community supervision style emphasizing motivational interviewing and meaningful professional relationships between clients and officers in a dual role as a therapeutic change agent and an enforcer.
Criminogenic Needs-Based Supervision
A court imposed sentence that involves a short time in jail, followed by a longer period of probation. Also known as shock incarceration.
Split Sentence
Conditional release to a community under a determinate sentence that is automatic at the expiration of a minimum term of sentence, minus any credited time off for good behavior.
Mandatory Release
Conditional release while still remaining under supervision of an indeterminate sentence, which is granted because members of a parole board have decided that a prisoner has earned the privilege.
Discretionary Release
A form of release from prison after 100% of the sentence has been served behind bars and there is no postprison supervision.
Expiration
A British naval captain who served as governor of the penal colony on Norfolk Island, off the coast of Australia. He instituted a system of early release that was the forerunner of modern parole. Maconochie is known as the “father of parole.”
Alexander Maconochie
A system of human motivation organized by Alexander Maconochie that granted credits for good behavior and hard work and took away marks for negative behavior. Convicts used the credits or marks to purchase either goods or time (a reduction in sentence).
Marks System
A notorious British “supermax” penal colony a thousand miles off the coast of Australia that housed the most incorrigible prisoners.
Norfolk Island
The forced exile of convicted criminals. England transported convicted criminals to the American colonies until the Revolutionary War and afterward to Australia.
Transportation
A license or permit given to a convict as a reward for good conduct that allowed him or her to go at large and work before expiration of sentence, subject to certain restrictions and revocable upon subsequent misconduct. A forerunner of parole.
Ticket-of-Leave
An Irish prison reformer who established an early system of parole based on Alexander Maconochie’s experiments with a mark system.
Sir Walter Crofton
Developed in Ireland by Sir Walter Crofton, a system that involved graduated levels of institutional control leading up to release under conditions similar to modern parole. American penitentiaries are partially based on the Irish system
Irish System
An American prison reformer who introduced modern correctional methods, including parole, to Elmira Reformatory in New York, in 1876.
Zebulon R. Brockway
The concept that, given proper care and treatment, criminals can be cured to become productive, law-abiding citizens. This approach suggests that people commit crimes because of influences beyond their control, such as poverty, injustice, and racism.
Medical Model
The concept that the goal of corrections should be to punish offenders because they deserve to be punished and that punishment should be commensurate with the seriousness of an offense.
Just Deserts
Otherwise known as compassionate release, a prisoner’s conditional release from prison to the community if he or she has a terminal illness or needs long-term medical care and does not pose an undue risk to public safety.
Medical Parole
While preparing for the next scheduled court appearance following arrest, a defendant’s release into a community as an alternative to detention.
Pretrial Release
The defendant promises to show up at the next court date and to remain law abiding. Allows defendants to remain at liberty in the community until their next court date without paying the court a deposit.
Release on Recognizance
Statutory authority that allows pretrial services officers to release a defendant before an initial court appearance in front of a judge.
Delegated Release Authority
An individual who agrees to become responsible for the debt of a defendant or who answers for the performance of a defendant, should said defendant fail to attend the next court appearance.
Surety
A situation in which a defendant does not attend a scheduled court hearing.
Failure to Appear
The post-conviction stage, in which a defendant is brought before a court for formal judgment pronounced by a judge.
Sentencing
A form of subjective extra-legal decision making where each defendant’s case is considered according to intangible factors, such as amount of harm caused, amount of media attention generated, whether the defendant provided assistance to prosecutors on other cases, and reducing perceived oppression or system inequality.
Reflective Justice
A statutorily determined sentence that judges are obligated to use. Any deviations (mitigating or aggravating circumstances) must be provided in writing and may be subject to appellate court review.
Presumptive Sentencing
A governing body that monitors the use of sentencing guidelines and departures from recommended sentences.
Sentencing Commission
A report submitted to a court before sentencing describing the nature of an offense, offender characteristics, criminal history, loss to victim, and sentencing recommendations.
Presentnece Investigation Report
After a defendant has pleaded guilty and been sentenced, a report written by a probation officer in order to aid probation and parole officers in supervision, classification, and program plans.
Post-Sentence Report
An investigation undertaken by a probation officer for the purpose of gathering and analyzing information to complete a report for a court.
Presentence Investigation
A written account by a victim as to how a crime has taken a toll physically, emotionally, financially, and/or psychologically on the said victim and victim’s family. Victim impact statements are considered by many states at the time of sentencing and at parole-board hearings.
Victim Impact Statement
Verification of a probationer or parolee’s situation and whereabouts by means of an officer’s speaking with a third party who knows the offender personally (such as a family member, friend, or employer).
Collateral Contacts
The right of a defendant to read and refute information in a presentence investigation report prior to sentencing.
Disclosure
One or more types of error made in the pretrial and/or trial process that does not change the outcome of a case.
Harmless Error
Information offered as a truthful assertion that does not come from personal knowledge but rather from a third party.
Hearsay
Probation or parole conditions imposed on all offenders regardless of the offense.
Standard Conditions
Probation or parole conditions tailored to fit the offense and/or needs of an offender.
Special Conditions
A condition of community supervision that attempts to invoke shame in an offender by requiring him or her to publicly proclaim guilt.
Scarlett Letter Conditions
Structured interview of an offender using a validated quantitative instrument that identifies an offender’s risk of recidivism and criminogenic needs to address during treatment.
Assessment
A measure of an offender’s propensity to commit further criminal activity that also indicates the level of community supervision required.
Risk
Correlates of the likelihood of recidivism that, once they are set, cannot be changed (such as age at first arrest, number of convictions, etc.).
Static Factors
Correlates of the likelihood of recidivism that can be changed through treatment and rehabilitation (drug and alcohol abuse, anger management, quality of family relationships, and so forth).
Dynamic Factors
The oversight that a probation or parole officer exercises over those in his or her custody.
Supervision
A method of community monitoring that ascertains offender compliance through one or more of the following means: face-to-face home visits, curfew, electronic monitoring, phone verification, and drug testing.
Surveillance
An officer’s personal visit to an offender’s home or place of employment for the purpose of monitoring progress under supervision.
Field Contact
The number of individuals or cases for which one probation or parole officer is responsible.
Caseload
Eight treatment standards that, if practiced, have been shown to reduce recidivism below that of other methods and that constitute the theory behind evidence-based correctional practices.
Principles of Effective Intervention
A therapeutic intervention for helping a person to change that is a blend of two types of therapies—cognitive therapy of the mind and behavioral change of the body.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
A communication style in which a community-supervision officer creates a positive climate of sincerity and understanding that assists an offender in the process of change.
Motivational Interviewing
A chronological account of detailed notes written by a probation or parole officer and organized by date, about any client contact and/or case information that becomes a permanent part of the offender’s case file.
Chronos
A bimonthly meeting of key staff members to discuss the progress and/or outcomes of probationers or parolees on a particular caseload or who are enrolled in a specific community corrections program.
Staffing
Treatment that holistically addresses previous victimization experiences and life circumstances that most often pertain to girls and women offenders, delivered in a collaborative and nonconfrontational manner.
Gender-Specific Programming
An agreement signed by all states and U.S. territories that allows for the supervision of parolees and probationers across state lines.
Interstate Compact
Under the interstate compact, the U.S. state in which a conviction is based.
Sending State
Under the interstate compact, the state that undertakes a supervision.
Receiving State
A community supervision officer’s use of techniques during interactions with an offender to reinforce desirable behavior and decrease undesirable behavior
Core Correctional Practices
An agreement between one or more probation/parole agencies and one or more local law enforcement departments to share information for a specific purpose, and/or assist in the supervision and apprehension of known offenders on community supervision.
Probation/Police Partnership
A form of probation that stresses intensive monitoring, close supervision, and offender control.
Intensive Supervision Probation/Parole
When an offender with a substance-abuse problem returns to abusing alcohol and/or drugs.
Relapse
A prescription medication that causes someone to experience severe nausea and sickness if mixed or ingested with alcohol.
Antabuse
A diversion program for drug addicts in which a judge, prosecutor, and probation officer play proactive roles and monitor the progress of clients through weekly visits to a courtroom, using a process of graduated sanctions.
Drug Courts
Residential community facilities specifically targeted to drug-addict and alcoholic offenders and/or drug addicts amenable to treatment.
Therapeutic Communities
The combined total of successful program completers and active program enrollees compared to the total number admitted to drug court.
Retention Rates
A diversion program for mentally ill defendants in which a judge, prosecutor, and probation officer play proactive roles and monitor the progress of clients through weekly visits to a courtroom.
Mental Health Courts
A device that measures erectile responses in male sex offenders to determine level of sexual arousal to various types of stimuli. This device is used for assessment and treatment purposes.
Penile Plethorasysmoraphy
A condition of probation or parole whereby the offender is not allowed within a certain range of places where children typically congregate such as schools, day care centers, and playgrounds.
Child Safety Zone
