Reform, Rehabilitation, Welfare and Treatment: Concepts, Confusion and Critique

Abstract

In any standard work on the bases of legal punishment (e.g. Benn and Peters, 1959; Bean, 1981), one will find described three principles which are said to provide alternative moral foundations as well as policy aims of punishment. These three principles are retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation. Of these, the first two have been included in discussions of penal philosophy down the ages and have always, to varying relative degrees, been incorporated in actual penal systems. Indeed, the very notion of punishment seems to depend upon these principles. It is hard to imagine how anything which did not inflict pain on wrongdoers in consequence of their misdeeds, and by such infliction seek not merely to avenge the wrong but also to discourage others from similar misdeeds, could be considered ‘punishment’: that punishment involves retribution and deterrence is almost a ‘truth by definition’. But rehabilitation? Apart from being something of a parvenu concept in penological discourse, rehabilitation seems not so essential to the idea of punishment; rather, it seems a tangential aim of the application of penal sanctions, an outcome which though it may be desirable in itself, may be unachievable within penal systems, and may be better brought about if separated out from penal policy and practice. If current trends continue, the central place of ‘rehabilitation’ in discussions of penal philosophy and the development of penal policy may well be short-lived.

The opposite of custody is not treatment, but liberty. (American Friends Service Committee, 1972)