Supply Side Corrections or Human Resource Management: A New Strategy for Parole and Probation

Abstract

The present thrust towards community corrections and the “privatization” of corrections has been motivated by a desire to improve correctional efficiency by the provision of better services to the offender at a much lower cost to the taxpayer. If community corrections and privatization are to achieve these ends, there appears to be a need for a change in the organizational structure of the government correctional services. Presently the involvement of private agencies in the correctional process has resulted in a therapist from a private agency fashioning his activity on the model provided by the government therapist playing the dual role of helper and policeman. In the belief that the improvement of the correctional process can come only with the separation of these two roles, the suggestion has been made that in the new organizational structure, the agent from the private agency should play the role of the helper and the agent from the government agency should play the role of the policeman. An alternative model for organizational change comes in the concept of Human Resource Management in which service delivery is entrusted to the private agency and the allocation of clients to the appropriate agency becomes the domain of the government agency. This concept sees the government agency as receiving clients from the courts and sending them to the appropriate community resource.