Book excerpt: Essentials of Community Corrections offers you a concise and practical perspective on community corrections while emphasizing successful offender reentry through strong community partnerships. Author Robert D. Hanser draws on his expertise with offender treatment planning, special needs populations, and the comparative criminal justice fields to present you with a complete introduction to community corrections today. A variety of practical pedagogical tools offer you insights into the daily lives of those working in the field and encourage you to start thinking like practitioners. Key Features: What Would You Do? assignments give you the chance to apply what they have learned by analyzing real-world scenarios to determine the best course of action for common challenges in community supervision. Applied Theory inserts throughout the book provide you with a focused application of a specific theory to particular issues in community corrections. Cross-National Perspective boxes demonstrate common themes in community corrections around the world, as well as different approaches used in other countries. Applied Exercises encourage you to reflect on your understanding of each chapter's content and to demonstrate your competence in using the information, techniques, and processes that you have learned. Food for Thought features at the end of each chapter guide your through a recent research study related to community corrections and include follow-up questions to help you think critically.