NCJ Number
122190
Date Published
1989
Length
23 pages
Annotation
Society in the past 20 years has rejected the habilitative notion that criminal behavior reflects a personal defect that can be identified and improved, choosing instead a system that recognizes individual choice and punishes bad behavior.
Abstract
Retributivist, utilitarian, and liberal attitudes toward punishment are discussed, and the "soft" approaches of social scientists favoring rehabilitation are criticized. A broad coalition of liberals, retributivists, and utilitarians ended the rehabilitative policy of indeterminacy in sentencing. While determinate sentencing goes beyond rehabilitation, it has not led to greater punitiveness. Determinate sentencing has, however, increased the penalties for less serious offenses and has left the dispositional patterns and practices established under indeterminate sentencing unchanged. In the absence of a more promising alternative, the movement to go beyond rehabilitation will probably continue. 66 footnotes.