Community Punishment and Intermediate Punishment

Under Structured Sentencing, there are two types of non-active sentences: community punishment and intermediate punishment. Intermediate punishment is supervised probation plus at least one of six specific conditions of probation (special probation, residential program, electronic house arrest, intensive supervision, day reporting center, and drug treatment court). G.S. 15A-1340.11(6). A community punishment is any other non-active sentence that did not include one of those six conditions. G.S. 15A-1340.11(2). About 44 percent of felony convictions result in an intermediate punishment (compared to 16 percent community), while only 3 percent of misdemeanor convictions get an intermediate sanction at sentencing (compared to 72 percent community). For both felonies and misdemeanors, intensive supervision and special probation are—by far—the intermediate sanctions of choice. (All data are from the latest N.C. Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission statistical report.) The Justice Reinvestment Act (S.L. 2011-192) makes important changes to the definitions of community and intermediate punishment—changes that generally lessen the distinction between the two types of sentences. For “persons placed on probation based on offenses which occur on or after December 1, 2011,” the definition of an intermediate punishment is changed so that the court is no longer required to impose any particular conditions to make the sentence intermediate. Rather, the only mandatory component of an intermediate sentence is that the defendant be placed on supervised probation. Aside from that, the law provides that the sentence may include drug treatment court, special probation, or one or more of the “community and intermediate probation conditions” set out in new G.S. [...]