NCJ Number
171293
Journal
Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 36 Issue: 3 Dated: (August 1997) Pages: 248-262
Date Published
1997
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This comparison of rehabilitation and just deserts concludes that rehabilitation may be incompatible with narrow and inadequate versions of just deserts, but effective rehabilitation has a place in a model of organic justice that aims at compatibility with social justice and community solidarity.
Abstract
The established argument is that justice in sentencing is necessarily retributive and backward-looking, based on offense seriousness, whereas rehabilitation is consequentialist and forward-looking, concerned with future behavior. Loss of confidence in consequentialist aims of sentencing is partly responsible for support for the current just-deserts models in criminal justice. However, recent findings concerning the effectiveness of rehabilitative efforts suggest a need to reconsider this aspect of arguments regarding just deserts. Making sense of the role of rehabilitative goals requires a better understanding of justice in its social context; thus understanding also requires a more explicit linkage than the current one between the goals of criminal justice and those of wider social policy. Effective rehabilitation, if it can be achieved, serves the goals of justice by offering one route to the social reintegration of some citizens who have broken the law; rehabilitation also offers an alternative to non- integrative and stigmatizing punishments that achieve little change in attitudes and behavior. Nevertheless, rehabilitative efforts need to be limited by just deserts, because program effectiveness cannot be guaranteed for an individual offender. Rehabilitative programs represent a form of work that offenders undertake as a result of offending and that sometimes helps them achieve reintegration. Note and 64 references (Author abstract modified)