Evaluative researches about the effectiveness of penal policies in recent years,have had an effective role in continuation or revision and reformation thereof.Community-based punishments as sanctions, that have been created accompanied by evaluative studies as to imprisonment,have been evaluated freqently. The emergence of the new generation of community-based punishments named intermidiate sanctions, that have liberty deprivation characteristics, could be regarded as a result of continuous evaluative studies in this respect.

The evaluation of penal policies necessitates the use of scientific indicators.The rate of recidivism is one of the important indicators in this respect.Of course the use of the rate of recidivismas an evaluation indicator has faced some challenges.The rate of recidivism,however,is still one of the most important evaluation indicators of community-based punishments.other indicators such as cost-benefit,remedy of damages and attraction of the public participation could be used in addition to the rate of recidivism.

The results of community-based punishments evaluation,in view of the rate of recidivism,state that the use of any kind of community-based punishments as to any kind of offenders could not be effective, so other factors such as the kind of commited offence , age,gender,personality and criminal precedent of the offenders should be considered in this respect.By using the cost-benefit indicator for evaluating community-based punishments,it could be said that these punishments,in contrast with imprisonment, impose lesser costs to the government.Of course the implemention of some kind of community-based punishments such as probation entail costs approximately equal to imprisonment costs.

The evaluation of community-based punishments from the viewpoint of remedies suggests that these punishments provide more opportunities to the offenders for remedying the damages of victims and society.Using the indicator of the of attracting public participation,it could be said that these kind of punishments,due to their implementation in the contaxt of the community and by participation of the local community , provide more grounds for attracting public participation in penal policies.

Successful implemention of community-based punishments necessitates preparing the necessary executive grounds such as precise executive structures for interaction between the participating institutions,cultural and educational techniques,allocation of appropriate financial resources and creation of fair informational foundations.