NCJ Number
225241
Journal
Punishment & Society Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Dated: October 2008 Pages: 429-445
Date Published
October 2008
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This article explores the contemporary legitimacy of rehabilitative practices in a penal strategy in the specific context of England and Wales.
Abstract
It has been argued that the project of offender rehabilitation has, in England and Wales, adapted and survived, evolving toward a model which has been characterized as ‘late-modern’. The principal argument presented in this article has been that rehabilitation has had to engage seriously with three key penal narratives in order to ensure its continued legitimacy into the 21st century: utilitarian, managerial, and expressive. In a number of recent analyses, rehabilitation has been portrayed as a casualty of processes of penal transformation, coming to be frequently characterized as ‘dead’ or ‘irrelevant’. This article takes issue with this characterization in the specific penal context of England and Wales, seeking to explain why rehabilitation is currently enjoying a renewed legitimacy by virtue of its compatibility with each of the above narratives. Notes and references