-8 the commission of the current offense and had pleaded guilty. He had served almost four years for this last offense. There were appreciable differences in characteristics of the three classes of releasees: 1) the parolee, 2) the good-time releasee, and 3) the expiration-of-term releasee. These differences are described in detail in the report. Because of the extensive arrest and incarceration histories of the 568 inmates released from the Reformatory for Men in 1965, they represent a major investment by the District of Columbia in the form of costs of previous arrests, court appearances, periods of supervision on probation and parole, and institutional stays. On the basis of procedures developed by the Research Division, Department of Corrections, it is estimated that the 568 inmates represent a criminal-justice careers cost, at the time of release in 1965, of approximately $28,960,000. This is an average of about $51,000 per releasee. Publication Jeanne J. Wahl, Donald D. Stewart and Stuart N. Adams, Social and Demographic Characteristics of Releasees from the D. C. Reformatory for Men, pp. 15, August 1968. 6) THE COST OF CORRECTING YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS Purpose and Method This study provides basic information on the correctional costs generated by the offense careers of 25 young men recently paroled from the D. C. Youth Center. These men were random selections from the parolee group and hence may be regarded as representative of the Youth Center population. Findings -9 The median age of the subjects on July 1, 1968, was nearly 26 years; their "criminal" records extended nine years, on the average. The subjects had spent an average of 32 months in the Youth Center, 8.5 months in Federal reformatories, 4.5 months in the D. C. Jail, 23 months on parole, 2 months on adult probation, 16 months in Welfare institutions, 22 months in foster homes, and 6 months on juvenile probation. They had also experienced an average of 6 adult arrests, 5 adult court hearings, 4 juvenile arrests, and 2 juvenile court hearings. Over the nine-year period that the average subject spent accumulating his "prior record," he experienced about 25 correctional actions and services ranging from a juvenile arrest to a term in a reformatory or prison. When the current costs of these actions and services are totaled for each offender, the individual costs range from $13,880.87 to $68,327.52. The median cost is about $31,000; the total cost for the 25 offenders is $842,426.40. If the median cost of $31,000 is applied to each of the 325 youthful offenders now at the Youth Center, a projected cost of about $10,000,000 can be estimated as the amount the public will have invested in the rehabilitation of the group by the time it is released to the community. This is an investment of major proportions. It is clearly evident that full attention should be given to possible means of reducing this expenditure by more effective early management of delinquents and young offenders. Recommendations Two possibilities come to mind. One is the introduction of community treatment programs such as those operated by the California Youth Authority; the other is the use of detached worker programs such as those developed in Los Angeles County. -10 Both these programs have shown a high level of cost effectiveness, and their ultimate result will be the saving of many millions of dollars in new correctional costs. With adequate planning and implementation, similar results should be possible in the District of Columbia. Publication Barbara Cantor and Stuart Adams, The Cost of Correcting Youthful Offenders, pp. 19, September 1968 7) PAROLE PERFORMANCE TRENDS AMONG COMMUNITY TREATMENT CENTER RELEASEES Purpose and Method A group of 259 releasees from the Community Treatment Center for Youth, D. C., was followed up to ascertain quality of performance on parole. The group included all releasees between August 1965 and June 1968 on whom complete information was available. Records on 11 cases were too incomplete to be of use in the study. Findings Of the 259 releasees, slightly less than one-half (47.8%) had been booked into the D. C. Jail at the time of the follow-up in July 1968. Several of the releasees (13%) had been booked more than one time. When the total group of 259 was broken down into five release groups or "cohorts" to provide several "exposure-time" groups, the highest booking rate (86.6%) was shown by the 30 month cohort. The lowest rate (35.8%) was shown by the 6-month cohort. All five release cohorts showed a sharp upturn in their "failure" curves during the period January to June 1968, possibly because of the unsettled social climate and the two serious instances of social disorder that occurred in that period. |