Public tolerance for community-based sanctions

Based on a factorial design survey of 237 Hamilton County (Cincinnati), Ohio, residents, we assessed not only whether respondents preferred, but also tolerated or viewed as acceptable, community-based sanctions. Rating vignettes in which the offender engaged in either burglary or robbery, a slight majority of the respondents favored a sentence involving incarceration. Even so, a sizable minority of the sample preferred to sanction offenders in the community, and tolerance for such a sanction was widespread. There was little support, however, for sanctions that did not involve the close supervision of the offender. We suggest that community-based sanctions will be embraced by the public only to the extent that a persuasive case can be made that the sanction punishes, restrains, and changes offenders-in short, that it works. © 1997 Sage Publications, Inc

Is Child Saving Dead? Public Support for Juvenile Rehabilitation

In recent years, the sustained criticism leveled at juvenile rehabilitation has raised the question of whether the public continues to endorse the correctional policy of saving youthful offenders. However, in a 1998 statewide survey of Tennessee residents, the respondents indicated that rehabilitation should be an integral goal of the juvenile correctional system. They also endorsed a range of community-based treatment interventions and favored early intervention programs over imprisonment as a response to crime. Taken together, these findings revealed that the public\u27s belief in child saving remains firm, and that citizens do not support an exclusively punitive response to juvenile offenders

Stress And Satisfaction Among Juvenile Correctional Workers: A Test Of Competing Models

During the past three decades, there have been increasing investigations of correctional employees\u27 reactions to their work, especially in terms of job-related stress and satisfaction. The vast majority of this research, however, has been conducted in adult facilities. To help address this limitation in the literature, we use a secondary dataset to examine the levels and sources of work stress and job satisfaction among 195 juvenile correctional workers from across the state of Ohio. The results revealed that, overall, these workers experienced moderate to high amounts of job stress and satisfaction. Levels of work stress varied significantly based on work-related variables, while both individual and work-related variables were important in predicting levels of job satisfaction. © by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved