American Debate on Sentencing Policy - Ten Years of Combat

• NCJ Number: 88367
• Journal: Revue de science criminelle et de droit penal compare Issue: 3 Dated: (July-September 1982) Pages: 543-553
• Author(s): D Fogel; J Bernat de Celis
• Date Published: 1982
• Length: 11 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: French
• Country: France
• Note: Texte en est publie in extenso dans les 'Archives de politique criminelle, n 5, p. 225 (An extended version of this text was published in 'Archives of Criminal Policy, n 5, p. 225).

Annotation

The 1970 inmate prison revolt in Attica, N.Y., was the turning point in American correction philosophy -- away from the treatment model and toward determinate sentencing, which reinstates punishment as the basis for criminal sanctions.

Abstract

The treatment model, which views offenders as patients and correctional programs as having rehabilitative rather than punitive goals, had been evolving since emergence of the new penology in the 1870's. But a century later, correctional institutions were showing the strains of a fundamental conflict between incarceration (deprivation of liberty) and rehabilitation treatment (requiring subjects' voluntary participation). Both incompatible goals were being pursued for individual terms of only vaguely specified duration. Inmates' awareness of the correctional system's disregard of their basic human rights was heightened by the 1960's air of militancy and calls for the rights of other oppressed minorities (women, the handicapped, the retarded) and was initially expressed in inmate class action suits against some correctional institutions. The climax was the Attica revolt, which subsequent studies found to have been precipitated principally by inmate uncertainty regarding their expected release time. Other studies were revealing the failure of the rehabilitation ideal while crime continued to rise. In response to these conditions, States such as California and Illinois passed determinate sentencing laws. This approach does not eliminate reeducational programming, but does clearly specify the length of a prison term to be served by offenders guilty of specific criminal infractions. It also curtails judicial discretion regarding the length of sentences imposed. It brings an element of certainty to the American justice system while eliminating a principal cause of prison violence and acknowledging the impossibility of coercive rehabilitation. Footnotes are provided.