NCJ Number
87531
Date Published
1982
Length
202 pages
Annotation
The text discusses types of responses to crime and their justifications, noting that individuals, who have differing preferences regarding ways to seek justice and protect society, cannot formulate a completely rational social policy.
Abstract
The demand for justice includes the demand for arrest, reprobation, retribution, restitution, and fair application of criminal laws, all of which are moral demands of varying importance to different individuals. Individual variations among lawyers, judges, juries, defendants, and victims often produce different responses to crime. Examinations of the Dangerous Offender Project in Ohio and other studies illustrate the difficulties involved in measuring the effects of incarceration and in predicting dangerous conduct. Methodological flaws in tests of deterrence have led researchers to erroneously conclude that punishment has no general deterrent effect. The effects of various therapies to correct offenders -psychoanalysis, magic, encounter groups, honesty therapies, etc. -- have also never been adequately assessed; there is no science of corrections. It does not matter how well correctional efforts work if they have no worse effect than other responses (i.e., punishment) to crime and can satisfy demands for justice. Nonetheless, the author offers some policy prescriptions, such as stopping involuntary therapy and the jailing of misdemeanants, decriminalizing vice offenses, and reducing the use of prisons. Study data, name and subject indexes, and more than 430 references are supplied. The volume can be used singly or in conjunction with three other volumes on criminal careers. For the other volumes in the series, see NCJ 87528-30.