The Expansion of Punishment and the Restriction of Justice: Loss of Limits in the Implementation of Retributive Policy

Abstract

PRIOR TO THE 1980S, INTELLECTUALS AND PERHAPS A MAJORITY OF corrections professionals in the United States would likely have been ridiculed for arguing for punishment as a primary objective of criminal intervention. Rehabilitation reigned as the dominant goal of intervention, with only a few voices challenging the justice of an apparent lack of limits and choice sometimes associated with treatment regimes and parole board decisionmaking (American Friends Service Committee, 1970). Though rehabilitation has never sufficed as a goal or primary rationale for intervention, as more significant critiques challenged the empirical basis of support for treatment (Martinson, 1977), punishment by the 1980s suddenly appeared to have achieved a new status of academic respectability. More important, the absence of any apparent alternative allowed retributive punishment to become the primary currency of in the United States, and a central focus of criminal policy dialogue.