The Federal Work Release Program

The Prisoner Rehabilitation Act of 1965 authorized furloughs, a system of work release, and the use of community residential treatment centers for adult federal prisoners. The act and its implications are producing great changes in correctional work. All through the federal prison system, educational and vocational training programs are being restudied and geared to meet actual community employment opportunities and the actual capacities of prisoners. The basic missions of institutions are being reevaluated and in some instances changed. The new programs are also bringing about significant alterations in personnel recruitment and development programs, organizational patterns, and budgetary planning. The walls of the old-line prison have finally been broken down. Nevertheless, the new procedures are not short-cut formulas for changing human behavior. The correction of the individual offender will always be a difficult process. The very difficulty of modifying human behavior dictates that we commit to the corrections process more resources than we have been willing to commit in the past. The emerging role of the correctionary is to muster the potentially vast resources of society. If research has shown anything by this time, it has shown that the correctional worker is not equipped to do the job alone. He needs all the help he can get, and spurred by significant new federal legislation, that help seems finally to be arriving