Principle Centered Community Corrections

Rick Warren’s Christian devotional book, The Purpose Driven Life (2002), has sold over 30 million copies, five million more than The Great Gatsby (1925) sold. It topped the New York Times bestseller list for a historical length of time and is the second most translated book in the world after The Holy Bible. 

The book's wild success demonstrates the conclusion from our last post: People crave purpose. Fortunately, community corrections provides purpose aplenty: second chances, protection of potential victims, return of parents to their children, and the ability of offenders to take some financial responsibility for their rehabilitation. 

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is a frequent paraphrase of a statement written by Saint Bernard of Clairvaus around 1150. While the phrase is taken to mean different things to different people, I find its meaning on consistent display in the human service field, including modern-day community corrections. It is often the most passionate among us, the ones who want to save the world and believe they can, that create critically dysfunctional human service agencies.

While human service agencies do not have a monopoly on dysfunction, they are uniquely prone to it. With passion and purpose to burn, they take off running. Without the structure and guidance of steady principles, they often get lost.

Controlling that fire 

I speak from personal experience, really personal. (I love working with offenders. As someone who always seems to be living five years in the future, there is just something attractive about their “live in the moment” worldview. I learn a great deal from them (hopefully them from me too, but I cannot guarantee that). 

I came into the mental health and correctional fields with a belief somewhat equivalent to “love conquers all.” Naïve for sure, but also lacking any sort of delivery system. I still have tremendous passion for helping offenders, but when I see unbridled passion, I see more danger than hope. 

When passion ignores reality, turns its nose up at research, and judges pragmatism, few people are helped. Purpose is like fire. Principles are the safe boundaries. Without the principles, fire does more harm than good.

The structure people don’t know they need

Few people (consciously) crave structure, but most function better with it. People need structure. While we believe we want complete freedom, without boundaries or expectations, we often end up frustrated and depressed. Principles serve as guardrails. While they restrict our freedom, they also keep us on track. 

Stephen R. Covey’s Principle-Centered Leadership has been a centerpiece for many corporate trainers in the past two and a half decades. Explaining how to align your business practices with vital principles clearly met the needs of CEOs and other leaders worldwide who had discovered their undeniable purpose but needed more guidance for the actual execution. (Apparently, people crave young British wizards even more than Purpose or Principles. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling has sold over half a billion copies worldwide in less than twenty years.)

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Purpose can ignite great work, but without clear principles, even well-meaning efforts can lose direction. Below are some common questions from correctional professionals trying to strike the right balance between passion and structure.

What does it mean to be “principle-centered” in community corrections?

Being principle-centered means grounding your agency’s decisions and daily operations in a clear, consistent set of values supported by research and experience. It’s not just about having good intentions or strong beliefs—it’s about aligning your work with what actually produces better outcomes. This approach helps avoid chaos caused by reactive decision-making and brings long-term clarity to your mission.

Why isn’t passion alone enough to drive effective programs?

Passion is essential, but without structure, it can easily lead to burnout, mission drift, or inconsistent practices. The human service field is full of talented people who care deeply, but those feelings need a delivery system. When emotion outpaces evidence, programs can spiral into dysfunction even with the best intentions behind them.

How do principles differ from values or goals?

Principles are not the same as values or goals—they are the rules you commit to follow while pursuing your goals and values. Goals can shift, values can inspire, but principles provide the boundaries that guide behavior and decision-making under pressure. In community corrections, they help ensure that actions remain consistent, even when staff are stretched thin or emotions run high.

Can each program set its own principles?

Individual programs may define their mission differently, but they shouldn’t invent principles in isolation. Years of research in the corrections field have already developed a solid foundation of evidence-based principles. Programs should draw from this body of work to shape practices that are flexible but not untethered.

How do we bring principles into our day-to-day work?

It starts with leadership. Principles need to be built into policies, reinforced in staff development, and reflected in how decisions are made. When principles are clear and modeled consistently, they become the cultural guardrails that keep teams focused, even when the road gets difficult.

Principle-centered practice in action

So, what principles should practices be built upon? Shouldn’t that be up to the individual community corrections program? For an industry that has never been short on strong beliefs, our industry needs guardrails more now than ever. If our industry is to survive and thrive, it is no longer acceptable to proceed on faith and gut. 

We must build practices on top of well-researched and proven principles, not just worshiped ones. Without using evidence-based principles (EBP), we are essentially proceeding with a “long conquers all” mission statement. As you can see from our Evidence-Based Principles (EBP): Simplified white paper, the principles are congruent with common sense and not foreign or complex. 

So...let’s let the fire of passion and purpose burn, but let’s be principle-centered too. Let’s learn from our successes and failures and, most importantly, from a growing body of research about what principles contain that fire, thus making it productive rather than out of control.

Read more in the series of The 5Ps of Community Corrections

• Community Corrections: Leading with Purpose
• Principle Centered Community Corrections
• Turning Evidence Based Principles (EBP) into Policies
• The 5Ps of Community Corrections: Procedures
• The 5Ps of Community Corrections: Practices