Incarceration appears to be one of the most popular forms of punishment for committing crime or other offences. The largest number of prison population is in the United States. According to a study, performed in 2013 by Lauren E. Glaze and Danielle Kaeble, statisticians by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), about two million adults were incarcerated and others less than five million were under parole or probation. Totally 6 899 000 adult individuals were under the supervision of Criminal Justice System (prisons, jails, parole, probation) in 2013. (Glaze, L., Kaeble, D., 2013)
With the establishment of prisons, the convicted juveniles served their sentences with the adults but very soon it became clear that instead of correcting their behavior the fact that they spent their terms in prisons with adults, was making them recidivist and the outcomes were tragic. Studies showed that the juvenile offenders came mainly from very poor families or they were homeless. It became clear that in order to decrease the number of the juvenile offenders it was necessary to devote more care about the wellbeing and education of these children.
The common law in the United States was strongly influenced by the Great Britain’s common law. William Blackstone, a famous and influential English lawyer of his time, published in 1760s his Commentaries on the Laws of England, and they were warmly accepted by the founders of the nation in America. He was the first to make difference between ‘adults’ and ‘infants’ regarding the law. He identified the group of ‘infants’ as incapable of committing crime or they were “children too young to fully understand their actions.” (Blackstone, W., 1760)
The treatment of young delinquents by the Criminal Justice system of the United States began to change during the nineteenth century with the establishment of special facilities for juveniles in trouble. The Society, founded for the prevention of juveniles from delinquency, helped the first facility for juvenile offenders, known as the House of Refuge, in New York in 1825 to be opened. The Chicago Reform School started in 1855 and the common goal of all that facilities was to separate the juvenile from the adult offenders. The first juvenile court in the United States for young offenders started to operate in 1899 in the Cook County, Illinois. Julian Mack, one of the first judges who presided that court, described its goals and underlined that the juvenile offender must “be made to know that he is face to face with the power of the state, but he should at the same time, and more emphatically, be made to feel that he is the object of its care and solicitude.” (Mack, J., 1909)
During the twentieth century the juvenile justice system had developed large number of programs which tried to include the participation of all parties (communities, families, schools, law enforcement units, etc.) in the struggle against crimes committed by juveniles, and the most important, to prevent the young people from entering the big group of young delinquents through the unreserved efforts of foundations, agencies, societies on federal and state levels. Their efforts were directed to the establishment of alternatives to incarceration for juvenile offenders, since the dominating opinion was that the preventing programs had multiple better results than incarceration.
Currently, in New York State operates the Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives (DPCA) which is funding approximately over hundred and fifty Alternative to Incarceration (ATI) programs which aim the decrease of pretrial arrests and incarceration and which are consistent with the safety of the society. They include: programs for mentally ill young people; pretrial services; Alcohol and Drug programs; Community service programs; Advocacy for the defenders and other specialized programs.
In 2002, the DPCA in New York established seven grants of about $50 000 per year for a period of five years which have to be used for specialized services to defendants with mental
illnesses. The first project started in Bronx and was directed to education and assistance of mentally ill defendants. (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2016). To make the program successful, DPCA has combined the efforts of many public organizations, offices, agencies, etc. in the state of New York as the office of Mental health of the NY state, Commission on quality of Care for Mentally Disabled, the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, Conference of Local Mental Hygiene Directors and many others. The collaboration between them underlines the dedication of all participants to encourage the coordination of services and their availability to this kind of population and the most important, to avoid excessive incarceration. (Ibid)
Historically, the state of Georgia was very often associated with severe correction system, and tough-minded judges, but in 1981 the state took a large step towards the revolutionary reform in the state’s criminal justice system. Georgia was among the states which first experienced the overcrowding of the prisons because the incarceration was the most popular punishment in the United States. The resources for constructing and maintaining suitable prison facilities were not enough, so the judges demanded the Probate Division of Georgia to place more serious violators on probation after detailed examination of every particular case. The society was ripe for reforms and ready for funding programs for alternatives to incarceration of nonviolent offenders. By providing possibility for 12 667 offenders, by assigning them to one of the alternatives, to avoid the incarceration for nonviolent offenders. (ASH Center for Democratic Governance and Innovations, 2016)
In conclusion it may be underlined that the alternatives to incarceration have popularity among the population of the United States due to the benefits they grant to the citizens of the United States as decreasing the burden of costs of correctional facilities on taxpayers, shifting the resources from the expensive and excessive incarceration to law enforcement units and programs that have been proven in reducing crime and recidivism and provide better education and work skill to juvenile offenders for their better implementation in the society.
References
ASH Center for Democratic Governance and Innovations, 2016, Alternatives to
Incarceration, Harvard Kennedy School, Web Retrieved on Aug, 31, 2016 from https://www.innovations.harvard.edu/alternatives-incarceration
Blackstone, W., 1760, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book IV, Chapter 2
(“Of the Persons Capable of Committing Crimes”), Web Retrieved on Aug. 31, 2016 from http://lonang.com/library/reference/blackstone-commentaries-law-england/
Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2016, The History of Juvenile justice, Part 1, Official
page, Web retrieved on Aug. 31, 2016 from www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/publiced/features/DYJpart1.authcheckdam.pdf
Glaze, L., Kaeble, D., 2013, Correctional Populations in the United States, (NCJ 248479),
Published December 2014 by U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), Web Retrieved on Aug 31, 2016 from www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5177
Mack, J., 1909, The Juvenile Court, Harvard Law Review, vol. 23, p. 120, Web Retrieved on
Aug. 31, 2016 from http://juvenileinjustices.weebly.com/
