The treatment of offenders

Abstract

“I've been in the soup pretty often … Someone always turns up and says, ‘I can't see a … man down and out. Let me put you back on your feet again’. I should think”, said Grimes, I've been put back on my feet more often than any living man.” Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall , p. 30, 1928 Introduction In both North America and Britain, official policy toward rehabilitating (or “treating”) offenders, particularly those under 18, rather than punishing or merely containing them, has swung back and forth in the past 25 years. The custodial or punitive approach, which dominated until the middle 60's, was succeeded by a more treatment-oriented model, and after about a decade or so, by a return to the original emphasis, under the impact of rising crime figures and a sense that the therapeutic approach had largely failed. At the same time there has been a continued move towards deinstitutionalization, particularly for juveniles, and an attempt to treat offenders in the community, rather than in settings remote from the real world. The combined effect of these trends has been that the major treatment projects belong to the 60's and 70's rather than the 80's, together with a continuing shift from large scale programs in institutions to less ambitious efforts in community settings.