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Abstract: 

This issue of JCC includes two articles that discuss important aspects of community corrections and criminal justice policy in general. The first explores reasons why offenders leave residential programs before completion. The second examines the intersection of politics and criminal justice policy. Andria Blackwood, a doctoral student at Kent University in Kent, Ohio, in collaboration with Alex Boros, Tessa Smith, and Adam Donnelly, researchers with Oriana House Inc., have contributed an informative article on client absent without leave (AWOL) behavior at a community-based correctional facility. The findings reported in this study should prove beneficial to practitioners attempting to improve and enhance their residential programs and ensure that clients complete successfully their stay in the facility. The importance of meeting the basic needs of clients is noted, especially with regard to employment, housing, treatment for substance abuse, and for older clients, mental health services. I would certainly like to see more studies about client outcomes and experiences in community-based correctional facilities, because these facilities are part of the frontline in providing re-entry services, and they deserve to be researched and evaluated in order to build our collective knowledge of their value and usefulness. This article also speaks to the value of collaboration between academia, a residential provider, and a state corrections department. Robert E. Brown’s contribution on “Corrections and the Political Agenda” traces the effects of the Canadian Conservative party’s legislative agenda over the past decade on the Canadian criminal justice system and corrections. There is no doubt, as Brown notes, that the political agenda of the governing party has led to a harsher criminal justice regime and a lessening of the role of community corrections in Canada. In terms of parole and conditional release, the reduced emphasis on supervised release has increased the numbers of released offenders finishing their sentences inadequately integrated into the community, without secured employment, completed treatment programs, or appropriate housing. This article makes the strong point about the roles of ideology and the desire to remain popular in polls as determining factors in the justice/corrections agenda and the ignoring and, in some cases, rejecting of evidence and expert opinion. Finally, our book editor Russ Immarigeon has provided useful reviews of five recently released books for the busy practitioner. The topics covered include the areas of penal expansion, justice reinvestment, community organization, desistance from crime, and fighting capital punishment.

Keywords: AWOL Clients; Politics and Corrections

Affiliations:  1: Journal Editor.