Final Thoughts

After a week of investigation and a great interview with Leta Youngblood along with research on the topics of prison and community supervision, we have some suggestions for altering the system to benefit everyone. We have decided that community supervision benefits everyone more than prison and the following suggestions are based on that observation.

We think making community supervision offered to all petty criminals would benefit both the offender, because they could get better constructive services, and the community because both the costs for services and the risks of endangering their family would reduce significantly. Leta, a director for the Fort Worth community supervision team, explicitly stated that the research has proven the effectiveness of community supervision surpasses that of prison.

On the other hand, making sure that the dangerous criminals have no way to access the public is important. For example, a serial killer should not be allowed on parole in fear that they might run away or begin killing again. This safety precaution is definitely worth the cost of keeping him or her in prison.

Racial discrimination is obvious when looking at the populations of prisons. With this in mind, judges should actively work to make these disparities diminish. They are not the only ones to blame for the disparity though. Police should be trained to be less discriminating and should treat and convict criminals equally, ignoring their race when deciding on their treatment. Prison guards should undergo a similar training and should be more racially diverse.

In summation:

• Offer more people community supervision and parole.
• Keep dangerous criminals behind bars.
• Actively work to reduce racial discrimination on all levels within systems.

Conclusion:

These goals are relatively simple but we realize that these changes would take years to implement, not to mention the money needed to retrain police and redistribute money. The infrastructure of America includes our prison system and prisons are constantly being built. It would also take a change in mindset of the American population. People would need to acknowledge that not all criminals are dangerous and support them in a change for the better. Social workers are expected to believe that people have the ability to change and it is this component of the NASW policy that would need to be adopted by the public in order to improve the prison and community supervision systems.

One more suggestion...