Define and explain the advantages and disadvantages of probation and parole

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Advantages:
• Lower cost than imprisonment
• Increased employment opportunities for the inmates
• Restitution is made possible because the inmate is working and able to earn,
• Community support is made in the belief that offenders will be more subject to control in the
• community if they participate in a web of positive social relationships. The idea is that this reduced risk of criminal socialization insulates adjudicated offenders, at least to some degree, from criminogenic values.
• Increased use of community services: Probationers and parolees can take advantage of services offered through the community, including psychological therapy, substance-abuse counseling, financial services, support groups, church outreach programs, and social services.
• Increased opportunity for rehabilitation: Probation and parole can both be useful beha-vioral management tools. They reward cooperative offenders with freedom and allow for the opportunity to shape the behavior of offenders who may be difficult to reach through other programs.
Disadvantages:
• Relative lack of punishment: The just deserts model of criminal sentencing insists that punishment should be a central theme of the justice process.
• Increased risk to the community: Probation and parole are strategies designed to deal with convicted criminal offenders. The release into the community of such offenders increases the risk that they will commit additional offenses.
• Increased social costs: Some offenders will become social liabilities. In addition to the in-creased risk of new crimes, probation and parole increase the chance that added expenses will accrue to the community in the form of child support, welfare costs, housing ex-penses, legal aid, indigent health care,
• Discriminatory and unequal effects: Some experts argue that reentry programs are unfair to women because female inmates undergoing the reentry experience find themselves qu-alitatively disadvantaged in their search for jobs and shelter, in re-obtaining custody of their children, and in successfully finding programs to help them abstain from drugs.