Assessing Correctional Rehabilitation: Nothing Works Revisited Essay (Literature Review)

Despite the fact that in the present-day world, prisons have become for the most part the means of punishing people rather than promoting their redemption and the desire to rehabilitate, recent researches have attempted at defining the avenues to encourage the latter. However, because of a specific structure, social relationships and ideas that it is based on, prison seems to lack efficacy in the given task. Despite the social isolation and the lack of motivation enhanced by discouraging environment, a prisoner may possibly rehabilitate, despite the legitimacy of a succinct yet all-embracing “nothing works” principle explained by Cullen.

Challenging Martinson’s “nothing works” view: evidence and meta-analysis

Despite the doubtless coherency of the argument and reasonability of the claims, Martinson’s article (Martinson, 1974) has a number of problems, which brings the significance of the results a few notches down. It is not only the radical statement regarding complete inefficiency of any rehabilitative strategy whatsoever, but also the claim that rehabilitation is actually impossible that rubs the wrong way about his research.

According to Martinson, these were not the methods that failed to help prisoners mend their ways, seeing how the claimed that the represented array of correctional treatments has no effects on rates of recidivism of those convicted whatsoever (Lipton, Martinson & Wilks, 1975). Instead, Martinson was obviously pointing at the fact that the existing rehabilitative models failed to produce the desired effect and change prisoners’ attitude towards the crimes that they had committed, or the punishment that they need to take in order to restore the society’s trust. More to the point, Martinson stressed that some of the rehabilitative models had failed in the realm of their own terms (Lipton, Martinson & Wilks, 1975). Moreover, in Martinson’s paper, the intransigence of the offender is explained not by the incorrigibility, but by the faults of the correction system adopted by the state law. Hence, it can be concluded that in some regard, Martinson does have a valid point. In many ways, Martinson’s argument can be related to the problem of whether legal punishment must be based on fear or redemption. Clearly supporting the latter option, Martinson does not take into account the fact that fear of punishment has been the guiding principle for legal system existence and, therefore, to break the “nothing works” tendency, it will be required to reinvent the entire justice system.

Meta-analysis and recidivism

Social factors and their effect on not only the shaping of a criminal, but also the ways in which a criminal may react towards the intervention approaches used in order to help him/her rehabilitate seem to have been left out of Martinson’s research, which makes his point all the weaker.

Remarkably enough, Martinson finally admitted that his approach was also flawed, seeing how some of the interventions finally proved efficient. In addition, the research conducted by Martinson did not, in fact, consider the rates of increase or decrease in criminal activity among the convicts who had served a prison time. Numerous replications of Martinson’s theory created in different settings also did not prove the given theory right, which calls for a reconsideration of Martinson’s arguments. Indeed, as Cullen proved later on in his all-embracing research on the rehabilitation techniques, “In fact, meta-analyses show that although treatment is delivered more effectively in the community, the overall impact across institutionally based interventions is to reduce recidivism” (Cullen, Smith, Lowenkamp & Latessa, 2009, p. 106).

The role of meta-analysis, therefore, was to outline the key limitations of Martinson’s research and, thus, to question the legitimacy of its results. In other words, meta-analysis has shown that the results of the research carried out by Martinson could, in fact, be argued against based on the fact that Martinson failed to take one of the key factors playing major role in the rehabilitation process into account.

Overall effect on treatment of recidivism

The data acquired in the course of the meta-analysis show that recidivism rates are reduced among the people who used to be imprisoned. For instance, Cullen and Gendreau (2000) specify that, according to the data acquired in the course of a meta-analysis, recidivism rates drop by 10% in the treatment group compared to the control group (Cullen & Gendreau, 2000, p. 110). More to the point, Cullen and Gendreau point specifically at the fact that the programs aimed at punishment rather the encouragement of a particular type of behavior among the research participants failed in reducing recidivism in 25% of cases (Cullen & Gendreau, 2000, p. 110).

Some researches, however, argued that the rehabilitation approach led to “coddling” offenders (Cullen, Pealer, Fisher, Applegate & Santana, 2002, p. 4). While the given statement is quite understandable from an emotional standpoint, it is hardly reasonable when viewed through the lens of logics. Therefore, the overall effects of the traditional strategies of rehabilitation on recidivism treatment varied from highly positive to discouragingly negative, yet they clearly were not homogenous. By introducing the principle of homogeneity into the research, Martinson reduced its credibility a few notches, which brought him to acquiring somewhat inaccurate results.

Martinson’s research and heterogeneity treatment effects

Among the issues that Martinson clearly left out of his research, the heterogeneity of treatment outcomes should be mentioned. Despite a comparatively solid and well thought-out evaluation of the effects of rehabilitation programs, Martinson seems to have missed an important issue regarding the fact that the effects of correctional policies are highly dependent on the specifics of the prisoner’s character. By disregarding the personality factor, Martinson shapes the research results considerably; therefore, his statement regarding the inefficiency of the rehabilitation methods becomes rather questionable.

It would be wrong to assume that Martinson’s research is incompetent or offers completely incorrect results; though Martinson does neglect the significance of prisoners’ personality in the process of rehabilitation, he still makes a very valid statement regarding the need to restructure the current system of punishment. Stressing the fact that the existing legal system is based primarily on people’s fear of suffering for committing a crime instead of cultivation of ethical convictions against crime, Martinson provides a very important observation. Indeed, the existing system of legal punishment is focused on fear, which seems hardly reasonable, seeing how an even greater fear can still cause a person to commit a crime. Even though Martinson clearly denies the possibility of rehabilitation, weirdly enough, he contributes to the idea of shaping people’s behavior towards a more conscientious approach towards abiding the law.

Principles of Effective Interventions: Discussion of Significance

With all due regard to the efforts made by Martinson in order to research the phenomenon of rehabilitation, his claim regarding the lack of efficacy of the existing intervention approaches still seems not to hold any water. With an efficient intervention strategy, the rates of recidivism can and will be brought down. However, for the interventions to work, they must be designed properly. Among the most significant rehabilitation principles, such ideas as the integration of a “boot camp” or an “intensive supervision” (Cullen & Johnson, 2011, p. 295) into the process of the criminal’s rehabilitation should be mentioned.

Efficiency of restorative justice approach: rehabilitative potential

Designed by John Braithwaite (1998), the restorative justice approach remains among the most frequently suggested ones when it comes to the discussion of rehabilitative interventions. Andrews and Bonta (2010) carried out an extensive research on the effects that rehabilitation techniques have on criminals. The results of Andrews and Bonta’s research are rather encouraging; according to the experiment results, with the introduction of a “specific responsivity principle” (Andrews & Bonta, 2010, p. 50) the rates of recidivism in criminals who had been released from prison dropped considerably, even though among the clients, the types with low maturity (60%) and high level of structure (0.60) prevailed. Therefore, rehabilitative potential is quite high, which makes the restorative justice approach a valid technique worth being used as the key for allowing former criminals integrate back into society.

Early interventions as an area for correctional policy to be concerned with

Designing the means to address the issue of criminals’ rehabilitation, one should consider early intervention, since the latter provide relatively strong ideas for the modern interventions to be based on. Farrington (1994) stresses the significance of addressing the problem of high crime rates among juvenile delinquents, making it obvious that the earlier the source of the problem is located, the fewer chances a person will have to acquire a criminal record in the future (Sarre, 1999).

Therefore, it is crucial that the issue of juvenile crime should be considered thoroughly. Farrington points at a number of factors favorable for shaping the criminal’s behavior at a comparatively young age. Since young people are more susceptible to the outside influence, they have much higher chances for rehabilitation than older convicts.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that criminals are traditionally believed to have no redeeming values and that the current system of legal punishment does not presuppose that criminals should be changed and brought back to the society, the recent researches show in a very graphic way that rehabilitation works extremely well and that, with the help of early interventions, criminals can be turned into law-abiding citizens. Compared to the traditional method of treating criminals, rehabilitation procedures are statistically more efficient, since the criminals who have undergone a rehabilitation course are less likely to be subjected to recidivism, as statistics says. By using the rehabilitation techniques, one will be able to shape people’s behavioral patterns by appealing to their need for integrating into society. Providing criminals with an opportunity to mend their ways, rehabilitation technique appeals to people’s reasonability, whereas the existing penalty system is mostly based on people’s fear for punishment.

Research on Public Opinion: A Review

Another impressive research conducted on people’s opinion regarding the issue of crime and punishment, Cullen’s Public opinion about punishments and corrections deserves being taken a closer look at. Indeed, the attitude of the society towards criminals has always been complicated. On the one hand, there is a genuine wish to see criminals changed and posing no threat to society any longer: “victims were more likely to have their needs, especially emotional needs, met in the conference than in court” (Braithwaite, 2002, p. 47). On the other hand, there is fear and the need to ostracize criminals: “Punishing offenders has become prevalent in many industrialized nations as evidenced by increasingly stringent laws and methods for dealing with offenders” (Bonta, Jesseman, Rugge & Cormier, 2006, p. 109). In the light of the above-mentioned fact, Cullen’s research sheds enough light on people’s perception of criminals. According to the research results, traditionally, the public prefers rather radical punishment strategies, including death penalty and three-strikes-and-you’re-out laws.

References

Andrews, D. A. & Bonta, J. (2010). The empirical base of PCC and the RNR Model of Assessment and Crime Prevention. In D. A. Andrews & J. Bonta (Eds.), The psychology of criminal conduct (pp. 45–78). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Company, Ltd.

Bonta, J., Jesseman, R., Rugge, T. & Cormier, R. (2006). Restorative justice and recidivism: Promises made, promises kept? In D. Sullivan & L. Tifft (Eds.), Handbook of restorative justice: A global perspective (pp. 108-120). New York, NY: Routledge.

Braithwaite, J. (1998). Restorative justice. In M. Tonry (Ed.), The handbook of crime and punishment (pp. 433–453). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Braithwaite, J. (2002). Does restorative justice work? In J. Braithwaite (Ed.), Restorative justice and responsive regulation (pp. 45–71). New York, NY: Oxford University Press).

Cullen, F. T. & Gendreau, P. (2000). Assessing correctional rehabilitation: Policy, practice, and prospects. In J. Horney (Ed.), Criminal Justice 2000 (Vol. 4) (pp. 109–175). New York, NY: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Cullen, F. T., Pealer, J. A., Fisher, B. S., Applegate, B. K. & Santana, S. A. (2002). Public support for correctional rehabilitation: Change of consistency? In J. Roberts & M. Hough (Eds.), Hanging public views on punishment (pp. 1–30). Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press.

Cullen, F. T., Smith, P., Lowenkamp, C. T. & Latessa, E. J. (2009). Nothing works revisited: Deconstructing Farabee’s rethinking rehabilitation. Victims and Offenders, 4(2), pp. 101–123.

Cullen, F. T. & Johnson, C. L. (2011). Rehabilitation and treatment programs. In J. Q. Wilson & J. Petersilia (Eds.), Crime and public policy (pp. 293–344). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Farrington, D. P. (1994). Early developmental prevention of juvenile delinquency. Criminal Behavior and Mental Health, 4(3), pp. 209–227.

Lipton, D. S., Martinson, R., & Wilks, J. (1975). The effectiveness of correctional treatment: A survey of treatment evaluation studies. New York: Praeger.

Martinson, R. (1974). What works? – Questions and answers about prison reform. The Public Interest, 35(1), pp. 22–54.

Sarre, R. (1999). Beyond ‘What works?’ A 25-year jubilee retrospective of Robert Martinson’s famous article. Canberra, AU: History of Crime, Policing and Punishment Conference.