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If the goal is a society with fewer criminals, then firm judgments are even harder to draw. Criminology is a dispiriting science. Its practitioners commonly caution that no criminal sanction, no matter how strict, no matter how lenient, seems to have much impact on the crime rate. But prison does at least keep criminals off the street. Home confinement cannot guarantee that security. Some data, tentative and incomplete, do suggest, however, that felons placed on intensive probation are less likely to commit crimes again than those placed on traditional probation or sent to prison. Joan Petersilia, a Rand Corp. researcher, says the recidivism rate of such offenders is impressively low, "usually less than 20%." And many keep their jobs, she adds. "That's the real glimmer of hope -- that in the long run these people will become functioning members of the community."
The benefits of alternatives will remain mostly theoretical unless more judges can be persuaded to use them. That may require changes in some mechanisms of government. For instance, fines are a crucial part of many alternative sentencing packages. But they frequently go unpaid. Courts and prosecutors are not good at collecting them, says Michael Tonry of the nonprofit Castine Research Corp., which specializes in law-enforcement issues. He proposes that banks and credit companies be deputized to fetch delinquent fines, with a percentage of the take as their payment. "To make fines work as a sentencing alternative," he says, "they must be both equitable, based on a person's ability to pay, and collectible."
One essential for getting courts to consider alternative sentencing, says University of Chicago Law Professor Norval Morris, is to develop a publicly understood "exchange rate" between prison time and other forms of punishment, a table of penalties that judges can use for guidance on how to sentence offenders. "We should be able to say that for this crime by this ; criminal, either x months in prison, or a $50,000 fine plus home detention for a year plus x number of hours of community service," Morris contends.
A similar table is already in use in Minnesota, where alternative sentencing has become well established since the 1978 passage of a law that limits new sentences to ensure that prison capacity is not exceeded by the total number of inmates. The crime rate has not increased, supporters boast. Other states remain far more hesitant. Still, the present pressures may yet bring a day when the correctional possibilities will be so varied and so widely used that prison will seem the "alternative" form of punishment.