Services of these professionals span numerous correctional settings, such as correctional institutions, community-based residential settings, probation and parole, and various special human services programs that contract with correctional agencies. Correctional counseling requires skill, knowledge, and experience, all of which shape the counselor's professional attitude and style and his or her response to the unique counseling situation and challenge of each offender. Goals of offender counseling and treatment, however, have become frustrated by the convergence of three recent trends: (1) political and scholarly debate about the effectiveness of offender therapy; (2) excessive agency accountability; and (3) declining fiscal and personnel resources due in part to prison overcrowding. Nonetheless, effective correctional counseling and psychotherapy are comprised of a process that encompasses timing, effective risking, and a sense of professional humility. Two general categories of correctional counselors are community-based and institutional. Community-based counselors include probation and parole service professionals and halfway house counselors. Institutional counselors include youth service counselors in juvenile correctional institutions and counselors in male and female adult prisons. Correctional treatment generally focuses on education, recreation, and counseling and case management. The effectiveness of correctional counseling and the use of correctional counseling as opposed to psychotherapy are discussed.