ABSTRACT
This textbook describes the recent developments and emerging dimensions that define community corrections today. To provide a solid foundation for this discussion, this introductory chapter takes readers on a brief tour of the criminal justice system, including the role that law enforcement, prosecution, and the courts play in what is today called corrections, a field which has undergone a number of changes over the past 40 years. In addition to explaining what corrections is today, and at what levels of the juvenile and criminal justice systems corrections is found, the chapter discusses how offenders are released from prison and provides some statistics from the major components of the correctional system—probation, prisons, and parole—to demonstrate how they are linked within the criminal justice system. To underscore the importance of probation and parole in the justice system today, the chapter also briefly considers the effect that completely abolishing these components would have on the prison system.
