Community Corrections and Restorative Justice.

Source: (2004) Current Issues in Criminal Justice. 16(1): 42-56.

Rob White is a professor of sociology at the University of Tasmania. With publications in the areas of juvenile justice, criminology, and crime prevention, he is also involved in prison reform issues in Tasmania. In this paper he draws links between community corrections as a form of professional practice and restorative justice as a philosophical framework for intervention. To do this, he discusses why community-based responses to offending are preferable to institution-based responses. Reasons why this is so, he asserts, include financial costs, opportunities for rehabilitation, and implementation of restorative forms of justice. He details this by looking at the following: philosophy as the driver of intervention; spending more on programs and expertise in order to spend less on prisons and punishments; and committing time now for community building instead of finding time spent later in re-offending and re-incarceration.