Ancient Times
Many ancient cultures allowed the victim or a member of the victim's family to deliver justice.
The offender often fled to his or her family for protection.
As a result, blood feuds developed in which the victim's family sought revenge against the offender's family.
Sometimes the offender's family responded by striking back.
Retaliation could conti.
Colonial and Early Post-Revolutionary Periods
Just as in Europe, physical punishment was common in colonial America.
Americans used stocks, pillories, branding, flogging, and maiming—such as cutting off an ear or slitting nostrils—to punish offenders.
The death penalty was used frequently.
In 1636 the Massachusetts Bay Colony listed thirteen crimes that warranted execution, including murder, p.
Does community corrections improve public safety?
Thus, community corrections (probation and parole) was initially implemented to reform or reintegrate the offender.
Further, if assessment of likely offender reformation is accurate, then public safety will be automatically enhanced.
The job of the criminal justice system in general and of the correctional section in particular is public safety.
Elmira Reformatory
The superintendent of the Elmira Reformatory in New York, Zebulon Brockway (1827–1920), used some of these ideas when New York opened the reformatory in 1876 for male offenders sixteen to thirty years old.
Brockway believed that rehabilitation could be achieved through education.
Inmates who did well in both academic and moral subjects earned early.
Medieval Times
As in ancient times, medieval Europe had very harsh punishments.
Torture and death were commonly administered.
From the depths of the "Dark Ages" came cruel instruments that tortured as they killed.
For example, the rack stretched its victims until their bodies were torn apart.
The Iron Maiden—a box thickly set with sharp spikes inside and on the i.
Prison Reform in The Early Twentieth Century
By 1900 Brockway's correctional philosophy had spread throughout the nation.
Nonetheless, by World War I(1914–18), the idea of using educational and rehabilitative approaches was being replaced by the use ofstrict discipline.
The way the facilities were built, the lack of trained personnel, and the attitudes of the guards made Brockway's ideas diff.
Prisons as Workplaces
Despite the efforts of reformers, most societies prefer that prisons pay their own way.
To do this, prison administrators have at times constructed factories within prison walls or hired inmates out as laborers in "chain gangs." In rural areas inmates worked on prison-owned farms.
In the Southprisoners—predominantly African-American—were often leas.
Rehabilitation Model
The rehabilitation model of corrections began in the 1930s and reached its high point in the 1950s.
Qualified staff members were expected to diagnose the cause of an offender's criminal behavior, prescribe a treatment to change the individual, and determine when that individual had become rehabilitated.
Group therapy, counseling, and behavior modif.
The Reform Movement
The idea of individual freedom and the concept that people could change society for the better by using reason permeated American society in the 1800s.
Reformers worked to abolish slavery, secure women's rights, and prohibit liquor, as well as to change the corrections system.
The Rise of Nations
In Europe in the 1500s, while most jails still housed people waiting for trial or punishment, work-houses and debtors' prisons developed as sources of cheap labor or places to house insane or minor offenders.
Those found guilty of serious crimes could be transported instead of executed.
England transported many prisoners to colonial Georgia in the .
When did community corrections start?
Be aware of developments in community corrections from the 1960s onward.
Community corrections is a term that brings many different thoughts to mind.
The term itself can shift in meaning and perception from person to person.
Would community corrections exist if there were enough prison space?
This also further implies that, if there were enough prison space, community corrections might not exist.
This is simply not the case, being that community corrections is often imple- mented in jurisdictions that do not have overcrowding problems.
