Recidivism Reduction: Community-Based Supervision Alternatives to Incarceration

Recidivism Reduction: Community-Based Supervision Alternatives to Incarceration

As a result of failed corrections practices, our criminal justice system has created a revolving door of offenders. More than 40 percent of offenders released from prison are back behind bars within three years and these high recidivism rates are responsible for soaring correctional costs that provide no commensurate public safety return.

States cannot afford the budgetary costs and society cannot afford the human costs of a dysfunctional criminal justice system. In order to deliver the results taxpayers deserve, America’s courts, prisons, jails and community supervision programs should encourage the implementation of evidence-based practices that have proven to safely reduce both the number of offenders in prison and those being sent back for violating the terms of their supervision.

To highlight the problems and solutions dealing with recidivism in the criminal justice systems, the ALEC Justice Performance Project has released a new report, “Recidivism Reduction: Community-Based Supervision Alternatives to Incarceration.” This report outlines the problem of recidivism, explains evidence-based practices that may be implemented as solutions and presents the ALEC Recidivism and Reduction Act as a sound policy solution to combat recidivism and achieve the most public safety for every taxpayer dollar.