The discussion notes that community corrections programs present safe, efficient, and cost-effective options for punishing and treating eligible offenders in the community, thereby saving scarce and expensive prison beds for the serious and violent offenders who need to be removed from society. The State of Ohio currently spends almost 5 percent of its total annual operating budget for corrections; the annual cost of imprisonment in a State prison is more than $12,000 per offender. In calendar years 1992 and 1993, the more than 24,000 inmates released from prison after serving a year or less may have been better and less expensively punished at the community level. Ohio's programs and initiatives include community-based correctional facilities and community punishment options established under the Ohio Community Corrections Act grant program. The continuum of intermediate sanctions include pretrial diversion, treatment in lieu of conviction, fines, community service orders, standard probation, intensive supervision probation, home curfew, day reporting, house arrest with or without electronic monitoring, halfway houses, residential drug treatment, community-based correctional facilities, work release, and the county jail. Figures