A Study On Government-Led Community Corrections Management

Community Corrections also known as community treatment, is a management mode to educate and convert criminals with the community resources instead of social isolation. Opposite to the traditional imprisonment penalty, Community Corrections is a new penalty implementation system which corrects criminals’psychological and behavioral bad habits and accelerate their successful return to society with the joint help of government departments, grassroots autonomous organizations, social organizations, civic groups and social volunteers. As an emerging socialized penalty mode, Community Corrections reflects not only the main humanizing and moderating trend of penalty implementation, but also the developing trend of diversification and socialization of public administration.Our pilot community corrections since2003has achieved initial results in the study of the theory and practice field of the system. Although we have already carried out Community Corrections comprehensively, the government faces many difficulties in the management of this exotic system, due to different cultural backgrounds, political systems and social atmosphere between China and Western countries. Conducted in such a background, this study gains firsthand information of the government-led Community Correction of city Y, Zhejiang through visits and researches, questionnaires and individual interviews, analyzes the current situation and problems and proposes strategies on how to strengthen Community Corrections management.In my opinion, the government-led Community Corrections management reflects the concept of the new public administration theory that government should take in non-governmental organizations and the public to management public affairs, and the concept of new public service theory that government should pay more attention to democratic values and public services, as well as the core philosophy of the polycentric governance theory. The paper presents the Community Corrections management mode of the United States and other western countries as well as domestic cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Although the participation levels of social forces such as non-governmental organizations and volunteers in Community Corrections vary around the world, overall Community Corrections management is carried out under the guidance of the government, especially in our country.The paper analyzes the status quo of government-led Community Corrections management in City Y of Zhejiang Province and elaborates correction object classification structure, government agencies, management systems and management team building, as well as achievements of the Community Corrections management. The paper also studies the problems of government-led Community Corrections management in City Y of Zhejiang Province and analyzes their causes. From the current perspective, the main problems are the unsmooth connection of public security department and other departments of convergence, inadaptability of governmental staff such as judicial assistants, unobvious effect of only nursing homes as volunteer labor bases, correcting objects in lack of self-knowledge and separation from families, and public participation being not high. The reasons are insufficient levels of the legal system, unclear responsibilities of government departments, lack of regulatory evaluation mechanisms, and lag of social forces fostering. Based on the elaboration on the status quo and analysis on problems and causes, the paper focuses on proposed government measures to improve the management of Community Corrections, from the national level, should be introduced as soon as possible a special "Community Corrections Act," clearly the scope of the implementation of Community Corrections, clear responsibilities of various government departments, Community Corrections rich management tools, Community Corrections should establish and improve the investigation and assessment, report receiving education management, evaluations, imprisoned execution, lifting and other supporting all aspects of the correction system and the public prosecutor. Division of convergence between systems. Local governments can also be combined with local realities, explore the establishment of traditional and modern means of combining qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the regulatory mechanism to better manage the corrected object. Government should further adjust and optimize the organization set up to improve the status of judicial and administrative authorities, fully serviced with strong county and township levels, Community Corrections agency force and integrate the four main functions of public security department in the county-level law enforcement authorities to co-ordinate Community Corrections management Education Center to establish "one-stop" linkage centers, but also to the prison, patriotic education bases utilize a variety of resources, abundant labor grassroots charity functions. The Government should also be expanded through enrollment, a dedicated full-time as a way of strengthening the justice system, the backbone of Community Corrections building management team to further foster autonomous organizations village (community) and the new power of social organization as a supplement to the management of Community Corrections, further to attract scholars, allied social workers and volunteers to participate in further increase publicity, so that further public understanding and support for Community Corrections.In short, I hope the research on government-led Community Corrections management by City Y of Zhejiang Province can offer new ideas to further promote the development of Community Corrections in China, especially for the small cities like Y.