CHAPTER 4 - ASSESSMENT, LABELLING OR EXPEDIENCY?

Abstract

This chapter discusses the different aspects related to assessment, labeling, or expediency. The demands made upon the remand home system are sufficiently well defined and are understood as not to cause them to feel inadequate in meeting them. These goals also minimized the traditional conflicts associated historically with the aims of correctional institutions for young offenders, that is, the inevitable conflict between goals that are deemed to satisfy the needs of the child, and those that are deemed to satisfy the demands for security from the community. The upheaval that was a feature of those assessment centers that had formerly been remand homes during the first years of change of role and function did not last long. The next stage in developmental process is remembered as being one of euphoria—brief, misplaced, but nevertheless euphoric. The remand home regime was indeed a model of the total institution with its depersonalizing procedures and dependence upon inmate conformity for survival, despite the hostility and resentment created within that client group by that philosophy.