Correctional Research: An Elusive Paradise

Abstract

Criminologists repeatedly have envisioned academic Utopias in prisons, courts, and other agencies handling criminals. In their dream worlds, research would guide practice and practi tioners would support research. Such promising arrangements, though sometimes initiated, have never been fully achieved. Their failure involved either coöptation of academicians by ad ministrators, in which instances research goals were abandoned, or divergence of research and operations into separate and largely autonomous social systems. New advances toward this elusive ideal have recently been in dicated at several points. These gains seem to require the "institutionalization of rationality" in correction through (1) legislative demands for change and for "hard" criteria of achieve ment in coping with criminals; (2) bridging of traditional admin istrative boundaries between police, couris, prisons, and parole; and (3) research designs which accommodate the conflicting or ganizational goals of correctional systems.