Check Out a New Report, “Building Trust and Legitimacy within Community Corrections,” from the Executive Session on Community Corrections

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and Harvard Kennedy School’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management recently released a paper as part of a series resulting from the Executive Session on Community Corrections. In the paper “Building Trust and Legitimacy within Community Corrections,” authors Wendy Still, Barbara Broderick, and Steven Raphael provide an overview of the current corrections environment in the United States and offer a new correctional model to incorporate into broader criminal justice reform.

The new model aims to strategically direct resources for individuals on probation and parole, bringing meaningful change to the community corrections system and promoting fairness, efficiency, and safety. The team identifies six key principles to achieve this change:

1. Treating individuals on probation and parole with dignity and respect.
2. Realigning incentives within the community corrections and criminal justice system.
3. Using the least restrictive sanctions necessary to reduce collateral consequences relating to conviction.
4. Facilitating community health and wellness holistically.
5. Ensuring fair, equal access to the justice system by reducing institutional biases.
6. Performing constant policy evaluation to ensure promising practices are continued, while less effective practices are discarded.

To read the full report, please click here.