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35 Fed. Probation 34 (1971)
Evaluating Work Furlough

handle is hein.journals/fedpro35 and id is 36 raw text is: FEDERAL PROBATION traffic citations have been written and how many arrests have been made during your tenure? No, you are going to tell them that during your tenure, crime was reduced by X-percent and the number of traffic accidents have been reduced. The higher echelon of police administration know their job is to stop crime; but there is a real danger that the officer on the street may think of his job as a numbers game, to provide a quantity of tickets or arrests. There is a failure here. The failure is not with the policeman. He is really responding to the kind of pressures that are put on him by police management. It is easier to judge men by the quantity of tickets they write than it is to judge them on their effect on traffic flow. It is easier to judge a man by the number of arrests he makes than it is to judge him on the quality of his work stopping crime. Because the numbers game is easier, there ig a real tempta- tion to resort to it. The challenge of police management is to com- municate the true nature of the police mission to the man in the radio car on the street. Manage- ment has to sell the policeman a piece of geography and say, This is your district. Your job is to stop crime and disorder here. We don't want burglaries or stickups or street-fights. If you have to arrest someone for violating any law, do it. You have been trained to stop crime. Do it in your area, and get the community to help you. We in the police field spend a lot of time talking about numbers in the crime field. We spend even more time talking about mechanical gadgets and developing programs of one kind or another. I believe one of our major failings is that we have not spent enough time talking about prin- ciples. I believe that if we can agree on the nine prin- ciples set forth by Sir Robert Peel, we can all do a better and more professional job in achieving our goal. Evaluating Work Furlough BY ALVIN RUDOFF, PH.D., T. C. ESSELSTYN, PH.D., AND GEORGE L. KIRKHAM San Jose State College, San Jose, California N 1957 the sheriff of Santa Clara County, Cali- fornia, applied a version of Wisconsin's his- toric Huber law by paroling selected inmates to work in the community during the day and revoking their parole at night. State legislation made it possible to improve upon this practice later. By law, the work furlough administrator could be either the County probation officer or the County sheriff. In Santa Clara County, the sheriff has continued to exercise this function. For several years, work furlough in California was operative only in Santa Clara and Marin Counties. Currently work furlough, work release, community work programs-the terms are syn- onymous-are found in 22 counties of this State, 30 other states, and in the federal correctional system. Under work furlough, the inmate is released to work at his regular civilian job at regular wages I Charles J. Prelsnik, sheriff 1966-1970. Also prominent in initiating the Work Furlough Study were James M. Geary, undersheriff: George Williams, rehabilitation officer; Joe E. Levitt, past president, and Robert Keldgord. then executive director. California Council on Crime and Delinquency. during the day. He returns to custody at night. This procedure lasts until his sentence expires or until he is removed from the program. The inmate on work furlough saves the tax- payer a substantial part of the expense of his keep since a charge for maintenance may be made against his earnings. Amounts may be withheld from his paycheck for the support of his family, for the payment of fines and restitution orders, and for other expressed purposes. Work furlough is thus a relief to the taxpayer in many ways. Beyond this, its impact is largely conjectural. In order to respond as comprehensively as pos- sible to inquiries from many other jurisdictions which were considering work furlough, the sher- iff of Santa Clara County1 called for a full-scale evaluation of the program by an independent agency. The senior authors of this article and following reports were asked to undertake this task. In time, and with the endorsement of the California Council on Crime and Delinquency, a 4-year grant was authorized by the Social and Rehabilitation Service of the U.S. Department of

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