Rehabilitative sentencing collapsed under attacks from left, right, and empirical research.
Evidence
Beginning in the early 1970s, this emphasis on rehabilitation came under attack. Conservatives charged that it promoted excessive leniency in sentencing and that punishment should serve the purposes of retribution and incapacitation rather than rehabilitation. Liberals attacked the potential for unfairness and discrimination in a system under which offenders committing the same crime could serve widely disparate sentences, especially when those deciding sentences (judges and parole boards) did not have to explain or justify their choices. Social science research also undermined the case for rehabilitation, demonstrating that imprisonment rarely promoted rehabilitation and that, even when it did, officials could not reliably determine which offenders had been rehabilitated. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1910
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: An unusually clean three-front collapse explanation: ideology from both poles plus measurement failure converging to overturn a dominant paradigm.
- XREF: Mirrors the ch. 1900-09 rehabilitation model description and connects to the general theme of fads/paradigms in penal policy. — connects to: Legal standards for insanity measurably shape both plea frequency and outcomes. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1896; Failed penal reform collapses back into harsher punishment; Penal reform fails whenever it is detached from general social progress — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 969 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Failed penal reform collapses back into harsher punishment
#expands(0.80) - Right-wing authoritarianism predicts willingness to inflict escalating punishment in a learning experiment.
#corroborates(0.78) - Penal reform fails whenever it is detached from general social progress
#qualifies(0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 969 - Right-wing authoritarians apply harsher judgments to low-status or out-group offenders for identical acts.
#corroborates(0.75) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1457 - Criminal punishment patterns lack deterrence or retributive logic
#complicates(0.72) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 710 - Severe sentencing fails to reduce crime yet politicians escalate it anyway
#expands(0.72) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 888