Occoquan, Virginia, adjacent to the Lorton complex. Everywhere in the nation the courts are clogged with persons charged with public intoxication. In the District they are now removed from the criminal justice system, unless some other criminal charge is made.

From presentment through trial, the courts have made extensive use of the provisions of the Bail Reform Act of 1966 instead of detention, permitting many to be given bail on their personal recognizance, or promise to appear in court. The use of personal recognizance has been very great here. The Bail Reform Act changed bail here in a way that has led to very great reduction in the number of those denied bail. The provisions of the Court Reform Act providing beginning February 1, 1971 for preventive detention, have been used very slightly. After four months-from February 1 to June 1-only four persons were preventively detained.

The availability of third party custody, with supervision, social services, and job counseling and employment services, has led to intensive use by the Courts of Bonabond, a private organization which offers all these services. The Offender Rehabilitation Program of the Public Defender Service also offers services to persons between arrest and trial, in the form of job counseling, job finding, and other kinds of counseling and social services for defendants in criminal cases. The Department of Corrections has several community centers for work re'ease supervision of persons released to supervision of the Bail Agency. The purpose of these services is to improve the possibility that the court, if a conviction results from the trial, will use probation or work release for those who have been successful in the program of these agencies. The courts have also made increasing use of diversion of first offenders with no previous adult convictions in Project Crossroads. Crossroads was designed as an alternative to incarceration, was funded through the Department of Labor through the end of calendar year 1970, and has subsequently been inc'uded within new Superior Court's budget. Project Crossroads makes its services available to both males and females between the ages of 16 and 25. Through intensive counseling, job placement, remedial education, and other supportive services over a three month period following arrest, but prior to trial, the program attempts to reorient those it serves before they are committed to crime as a way of life. If, at the end of a 90-day period, the defendant has shown satisfactory progress, then the court is asked to dismiss the charges. The project involves itself only with those who commit property crimes: burglary, larcency, auto theft, and to some extent, prostitution and forgery. It does not work with those involved in homicide, rape, aggravated assault, gambling, fraud, organized crime, and so forth. The assumption on which Crossroads, Offender Rehabilitation, and Bonabond work is that many of those involved in crime are involved because crime is an economic alternative to work, or provides an addition to income from work. For those with few skills and litt'e education in a crowded urban area, crime can become an acceptable way of life. These programs are designed to offer defendants an alternative way of life with better prospects through job training and counseling, and job finding and placement.

There also exists a program called the Emotionally Disturbed Accused Offender program, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health for two years, which has taken approximately 25 cases per month over that two year period ending shortly. The purpose is to remove from the criminal Justice system those persons suffering from some apparent mental disturbance and to develop a therapy program for them which will treat and ameliorate or cure the mental or emotional disturbance.

The District now offers-in a project funded by an LEAA grant last falllegal psychiatric services to selected defendants on an outpatient basis, thereby reducing the numbers of persons waiting in the jail for transfer to St. Elizabeth's Hospital for psychiatric examination, prior to the determination by the court or bail or probation. Some 15 to 20 cases per month are handled on this basis, which is again a real breakthrough in terms of reducing or eliminating time in jail for those who do not need it.

In another area which in many jurisdictions clogs the courts and occupies the prosecutors with cases which never come to trial, the Court Reform Act has begun to provide relief, although whether it is in fact providing a substantial alternative to incarceration is doubtful. The Act provides that intrafamily offenses may be handled by civil action rather than criminal action.

It was formerly the case that there was no alternative but arrest, but that once the case reached the prosecutor, the case was dropped because the aggrieved spouse refused to prosecute. The experience was that the police then had to make another arrest in much the same circumstances within the same family in a short time. At present, the police have begun issuing citations rather than making arrests, wherever possible in intra-family offenses. U.S. Attorney refers most cases to the Social Services Division of the new Superior Court for counseling. In cases where that is not successful, the case is referred to the Corporation Counsel for civil action, and the Corporation Counsel, working closely with the U.S. Attorney, has experienced great success with asking the court to issue restraining orders of various kinds. In a further effort to decriminalize this area, the city has used LEAA funds to support a Police Pilot District Project program to create Nighttime and Weekend Emergency Service Centers, to which many intra-family disagreements could be referred if they were not serious enough for the police to make an arrest or issue a citation, thereby freeing the police for more important work.

At sentencing, there are a variety of alternatives to incarceration, of course, including in particular probation and release to a community correctional center for certain defendants. Probation has not been used extensively in the District of Columbia, and in fact has declined in the U.S. District Court, according to our information, from 38 per cent of all offenders in fiscal 1969 to 31 per cent in fiscal 1970. In the Court of General Sessions, now the reorganized Superior Court, probation ran about 17 per cent in fiscal 1970.

However, the use of community correctional centers has greatly increased. There are now altogether 13 centers, of which several are used for direct work release of misdemeanants sentenced by the Superior Court. The Youth Crime Control Project permits the Department of Corrections to participate, in effect, in Youth Corrections Act cases sentencing, in that the Department exercises its authority under the Act to place certain convicted persons in a community correctional center. The center is designed for approximately 30 per

sons.

At the post-sentencing stage in the criminal justice process, there is a commitment on the part of the Department of Corrections to expand its work release program through use of community correctional centers. As indicated, there are some 13 centers now, with a capacity of 450, and an intention to expand to perhaps 18 to 20 by the end of fiscal year 1972, with a capacity of 600 to 900. This program is massive for a city of this size, and represents furthermore very rapid growth. In 1965, work release for felons was authorized for the first time by law, and in 1966 for misdemeanants. Two years ago, in June, 1969, there existed capacity for only approximately 50 persons in two community correctional centers. Today there is capacity for 450 in 13

centers.

Intensified institutional treatment services are also being used to facilitate earlier release of selected offenders. In 1966, the average number of months served in the Youth Center of those sentenced under the Youth Corrections Act was 21 months. Today it is approximately 12 months. This is, the Department of Corrections says, a direct reflection of the ability of the Department to obtain resources for counseling, therapy, psychiatric assistance, and education and job training in the Youth Center.

Work release, furthermore, is expanding as a result of Department of Corrections recommendations that many more men are ready for work release at six months prior to parole eligibility. Earlier, the Department was recommending work release only two to three months prior to parole eligibility.

Still another area where there is now some increased use of an alternative to incarceration is in the area of reduction of sentences. There is authority for the court which sentenced an offender to reduce in cases not involving crimes of violence the minimum sentence where there is a reasonable probability that the offender will live in the community and remain in the community without violating the law. The Board of Parole, with the advice of the Department of Corrections, may petition the court for a reduction, or the inmate may petition the court himself. Few of these petitions have been granted, but the number is rising.

Youth Corrections Act cases may be paroled after the initial Board of Parole hearing, which must be held on all Youth Corrections Act cases within 60 days of commitment. The Board of Parole may also recommend probation

for those committed for diagnosis and evaluation under Section 5010 (e), but does so fairly rarely, largely because the Board is aware that the present caseload of the probation services in the District is high and the level of supervision is therefore not as high as it might wish.

The use of parole is also rising in the District. The number of initial hearings, for example, averaged 26 a month in calendar 1970, and for the first four months of 1971, averaged approximately 50 a month, nearly double. The Board is expanding its capabilities to analyze and evaluate recommendations by the Department of Corrections, and its clerical staff, so that it can handle more hearings. Numbers on parole are increasing steadily.

There is, finally, the development of improved parole supervision by the Department of Corrections, providing far more supervision than was the case earlier. The Department has developed differential caseloads to provide more intensive supervision of high risk cases, including for example those who are known narcotic addicts, and is using, under contract to a voluntary organization operated by ex-offenders, ex-offenders as parole officers. This is an experimental program operating under research conditions of control and evaluation and funded by a research grant from LEAA.

The record of the District government in the development of alternatives to incarceration is a good one. At the same time, it is important that while we explore other possibilities, we keep in mind the need to provide a high level of security for the people of the community, and to avoid those uses of alternatives which either prove to be too costly in dollars, or in recidivism, or in lowered levels of public safety, for the benefits they bring.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPANSION OF ALTERNATIVES AND THE PROBLEMS INVOLVED

The Opportunities

We have not as yet completed a full analysis and evaluation of all the alternatives to incarceration, and of the opportunities they offer us, along with the problems they present. We are still engaged in an effort to collect both historical data on our own use of alternatives to incarceration and their success, along with comparative data from other cities with similar populations and similar crime problems. These data will make it possible for us to put our problems in some better perspective. All of this material will be presented in the final report.

We are aware, however, that many other opportunities exist for the expanded use of alternatives to incarceration. At the same time, we were not charged merely with the development of recommendations for expansion of alternatives, but with the analysis and evaluation of these alternatives and their prospects of success or failure. All alternatives involve greater risk of recidivism and greater risk, therefore, to the safety of the public in the short run. There has to be a strong case, therefore for the expansion of existing alternatives or the development of new ones that the benefits in the long run, in reduced recidivism through improved adjustment to life in the community, are greater than the costs in the short run. That is an extraordinarily hard case to make. Very little in the way of decent evaluation of program success over a sufficiently long period of time has been undertaken here or anywhere in the nation.

The results from Project Crossroads indicate that its clientele had a very low recidivism rate, and great cost savings. Over a 28-month period. charges against 467 of 825 young offenders in the program were dismissed. A fifteenmonth study of recidivism showed 22 per cent in the program were rearrested, while 46 per cent in a control group with similar characteristics were rearrested, a highly favorable outcome. The cost per enrollee was $500, far less than it would have been had they been incarcerated, where daily costs are now running close to $17 per day per man. We must be able to show results like these with any conditional release program or we cannot recommend its continued expansion. Nevertheless, the Crossroads resu'ts do suggest. as a study of the program indicates, that alternative approaches to the traditional judicial and correctional processes can be effective.1 The evaluation of that

1 John F. Holahan, "A Benefit-Cost Analysis of Proiect Crossroads," December, 1970, National Committee for Children and Youth, Washington, D.C., p. 66.

projects suggests also that one needs to be cautious in generalizing from any single study, or any single project. It may be the case that the employment approach taken by Crossroads is the right approach for certain offenders, but not for others in a different age bracket or who have committed other crimes. It may be that some other mix of program components is necessary for success elsewhere. It also needs to be kept in mind that an employment emphasis, which is the emphasis of most of the District's alternatives to incarceration, to some extent shifts, as the Crossroads evaluation suggests, the costs of rehabilitation to the community, both in the form of increased risk that the public will not be as safe in the short run as it would if no releases were permitted, and in the form of added costs for employers in the community.

The formula which ought to be applied to every program involving use of alternatives to incarceration is one very similar to the one used in the Crossroads evaluation. We want to estimate the economic cost of crimes, and of the services of the police, the courts, probation, and corrections services. These then need to be compared with an estimate of the benefits received from programs, including the reduced resource costs resulting from diversion of cases from the criminal justice system, the increased earnings or productivity due to job development and placement, and to higher employment rates, and finally, the reduced criminal justice system costs due to reduction in recidivism. The cost of the research involved in applying this approach is beyond our capabilities at this time. Nevertheless, it is essential that this kind of research be done. We have not been funded to do enough of it thus far.

In the absence of an immediate ability to undertake this kind of research, and in view of the need for an early determination as to whether existing or proposed alternatives to incarceration will afford some relief from the need to construct new correctional facilities, we have done the best we could with the data we have found to be available. We have identified a number of areas where there are opportunities for further use of alternatives to incarceration, and we have identified some problems related to them. We have concentrated thus far on those alternatives which are within the authority of the executive branch of District government, and therefore have little at this time to say about sentencing, probation, or bail, since these are all court prerogatives. A brief discussion of each of the areas in which we see opportunities follows:

(1) Decriminalization-There is a possibility that it would be well to reduce penalties for certain crimes, and to eliminate others altogether.

The police are already spending less and less time on matters involving homosexuals.

The reduction of penalties for possession and use of marijuana is under consideration.

There is wide recognition that the laws against prostitution are not producing satisfactory results, in that the incarceration of prostitutes for short periods of time does not seem to lead to reduction in prostitution.

In the narcotics area, there is under consideration the proposal that narcotics addicts, if arrested only for use and not for other crimes, should be treated like alcoholics under the Easter decision: that is, they should be regarded in the law as sick persons, and committed civilly in lieu of prosecution to a rehabilitation facility. We do not now have legislation which permits that. In the area of intra-family offenses, it is clear already that the new process provided by the Court Reform Act is a great improvement over the previous arrangement for handling these cases. We still lack sufficient resources, either in the court or in the community, however, to handle the needed counseling services if this alternative is to be fully expanded.

(2) Release after arrest and prior to trial-The use of citations can be expanded in selected cases, and is expanding now. Of 16,963 misdemeanor arrests in calendar 1970, some 3,180 were not authorized for various reasons to be given a citation. Another 6,729 were not offered citations, and of these approximately 4,000 posted collateral or bond, and 2,700 were confined. Approximately 7,000 were offered the opportunity to receive citations, but only 564 were issued. The policy of the Metropolitan Police Department is to encourage use of citations except in warrant cases. The Department of Corrections also wants to encourage use of citations, especially in situations where demonstrators wish to be jailed only to prove some political or other point, thereby needlessly occupying space in the jail and using up District resources. It is a limited alternative to incarceration, but one that can be safely expanded.

The District government could encourage more effective use of bail, especially personal recognizance, if there were more third party custody capability in the community which would involve guarantee of appearance and in the meantime some supervision and some assistance in finding and keeping employment. This would mean continued expansion of the Offender Rehabilitation Program, of projects like Crossroads for pre-trial diversions of selected first offenders, and of programs like Bonabond and community centers operated by Corrections for certain bailees.

The District government cou'd encourage better use of its narcotics treatment program in connection with bail, involving, as is the case now, urinalysis as a condition of bail and treatment as a condition of bail, for selected offenders, especially those not arrested for other offenses than use of narcotics. (3) Sentencing alternatives-While this is an area for the court and the individual judges to make their decisions about how to sentence, it is also clearly the case that there are some options open here.

More probation could be used. The court received authority and funds in 1970 to employ another 40 probation officers, but has not hired them as yet. The effect of added probation staff would clearly tend to improve the quality of supervision, and the number of cases in which a high quality pre-sentence investigation and report would be comp'eted. A high quality probation office might lead judges to increase use of probation.

It is possible that more narcotics addicts could be put on probation, if there were intensified probation supervision and narcotics treatment programs designed for probationers. The intensified supervision is not presently available. It is possible that the Youth Corrections Act, if used even more often than at present, would give the District government greater flexibility than it now has with minimum sentences of greater length. Under the Youth Corrections Act, there is a maximum but not a minimum. This would, of course, have to be accompanied by adequate staffing of a program of the highest quality to justify its expansion, since early release must be a function of completion of a treatment program which gives the best assurance possible of success in the community. The Waters case, decided last fall, is one of the sources of pressure on the Department of Corrections, since that decision held that for youthful offenders-between the ages of 18 and 22-the presumption must be in favor of use of the Youth Act and cause would have to be shown for not using it in the case of youthful offenders.

(4) Post-sentencing-The major possibilities, of course, are the expansion of community correctional centers and the expansion of parole, as well as more rapid work by the Department of Corrections to complete the 5010 (e) diagnostic and evaluative reports in less than 60 days.

Expansion of community correctional centers is now planned, pending of course careful examination of the performance and effectiveness of those now in existence. A capacity of 900 by the end of 1972 may be needed.

Parole is increasing steadily, and perhaps as rapidly as is desirable, again pending evaluation. The Board of Parole expects to make more use of the opportunity afforded it under the law to apply for the reduction of minimum sentences.

It might be desirable to experiment with what are called halfway back houses, in which probation and parole violators could be placed, instead of returning all of them to the institution. This would add flexibility and might lead to more willingness to correct violations than exists at present, when the only alternative in the case of violations is a return to the institution itself.

The Problems

As we consider these alternatives to incarceration, it is essential that the problems involved in their expansion be kept in mind. These problems center on the failure of a proportion of those on conditional release to observe the conditions of the release. At present, there are some 1,100 or more on personal recognizance who fail to show up for trial when they were to be there. There are a considerable number of those on probation, personal recognizance, parole, pre-trial work release, and in community correctional centers who are rearrested while on conditional release. There are a considerable number in community correctional centers of various kinds who abscond. The costs in additional crime must, therefore, in the short run be considerable. The com