Introduction
Marking a specific starting point for the history of rehabilitation is unrealistic because the notion of reform or âgoing straightâ has permeated philosophical and religious thinking about punishment from early times: indeed, even in the eighteenth century when jails were local, usually private with no state oversight and few regulations there were attempts to reform Houses of Correction to ensure that prisoners were put to work and that the purposes of reform and punishment could be established (McConville 1998). Moreover, the history of rehabilitation in thought and action is a vast subject, impossible to fully represent in a Reader inevitably constrained by space; as we indicated in the introduction to this book, we do not intend to repeat coverage of the subject that students and practitioners can find easily elsewhere. (There are many very useful expositions of the history of rehabilitation, for example, Hudson 1996 and more recently Raynor and Robinson 2005.) What we attempt to do in this section is to include what we judge to be critical (and simply interesting) contributions both to theory and practice, particularly as far as they relate to distinctive themes and developments relevant to state intervention designed to bring about change in people who have offended, and as far as they are likely to stimulate current debate. Inevitably, this ties us to the history of both prison and probation: however whilst we will focus on prison, it has been closely aligned with punishment, and given that we are looking beyond punishment to more community-based means of changing people and protecting society from the harm caused by crime, our emphasis here is on the latter.
The entries are listed chronologically, not because we believe in a simple, linear process of the humanising of criminal justice (Pratt 2002), but because doing so demonstrates not only how thinking about, and practice of, rehabilitation have developed but also how they have been contradictory, contentious and repetitious. Predictably, perhaps, we begin with Beccaria. Commonly, he is accorded a prominent place in the history of criminology, but it is less known that the attribution of this status is the subject of some controversy (Newman and Marongui 1990): they challenge the orthodox view of Beccariaâs contribution to criminological thinking generally and they make a strong case. Nevertheless, we have included what we judge to be his relevant thinking on rehabilitation because he provides an important signpost for the direction that the battle between religion and science would take as theorists and philosophers struggled with the moral problem of punishment. In particular, the extracts are included because of their close link to twenty-first-century policy concerns; they highlight the importance of science (what in modern parlance might be described as evidence), the relevance of a focus on positives (the current strengths-based approach) and the use of rewards as a means of encouraging change (motivation). Religiously inspired morality is an important element of Beccariaâs approach to punishment, and it might be described as more dominant than any scientific thinking. This is true also of utilitarian approaches: nevertheless, Bentham (who Newman and Marongui argue is more worthy of the status in the criminological pantheon usually offered to Beccaria) is a more than appropriate starting point for the student interested in the interplay between religion and science. The stimulation of moral and Christian self-contemplation for the prisoner is central to Benthamâs thinking about how the criminal mind can be purified, but his thinking about the framework within which this might take place is essentially scientific. Here, we have included two letters, the first describing the physical design of the Panopticon, and the second about how it would be applied to punishment and reformation. The significance of the Panopticon lies in its promulgation firstly of the prevention of communication and constant supervision in order to create an ideal setting for contemplation and reflection, and secondly labour as a punishment and deterrent. Of course, it never materialised but it has a significant place in the theory (shared and put into practice by the prison architect William Blackburn) that space and stone could fashion human personality and that the architecture of prisons could induce self-regulation and eliminate contamination (Evans 1982; McGowen 1998). Ultimately, the typical Victorian prison, symbolised best in the opening of Pentonville in 1842, was based on the American penitentiary, but as these extracts show, science was assuming a growing significance in thinking about how to turn people away from crime.
Contemplative or self-reflective thinking about sin, the cornerstone of those eighteenth-century theories of rehabilitation, was closely aligned to the idea of a second chance which in the early part of the nineteenth century became enshrined in the concept of recognisance. That history has been told many times (Bochel 1976; King 1969; McWilliams 1983; Vanstone 2007) and will not be repeated here; however, it is an essential element in the story of rehabilitation, and its early proponents are represented in the extracts. Matthew Davenport Hill and Edward Cox1 are key figures in the development of the use of recognisance in the United Kingdom. In 1841 Hill built on the system of recognisance used by the Warwickshire magistrates by introducing the keeping of a register and follow-up inquiries, and Cox combined the use of recognisance with the employment of a special inquiry officer. The extracts used give a detailed account of the rationale for the use of what Hill describes as an experiment and provide practical illustrations of its implementation; in addition, they provide the reader with a clear insight into the essential roots of what was to become probation.
However, the development of probation as a core component of rehabilitation would not have been possible without the practical application of the principles and theories underpinning recognisance, and this came from pioneers like John Augustus in America and Thomas Holmes in the United Kingdom. Both the extracts included here illustrate how early practice was focused on the problems associated with drink and temperance and how the personal commitment of the practitioner was underpinned by religious zeal and moral certainty but also by a basic humanity and concern for the unfortunate. Both exemplify a strand of rehabilitative effort that has woven its way through to the twenty-first century, namely the importance of the relationship and its cornerstones, empathy, concreteness and genuineness (Truax and Carkhuff 1967). In addition though, both Augustus and Holmes (and we can only surmise that they were typical) convey implicit and sometimes explicit assumptions about the degree to which the people they were trying to help were responsible for their fate. A reading of their work suggests that they believed in what May (1991) describes as soft determinism â they had limited rationality and limited responsibility, but only up to a point. Holmes in particular â as one of his extracts shows â believed that rehabilitation was a community responsibility and that the environment was an important cause of crime, but the accounts of practice reveal an expectation that the person to be saved had a responsibility to take the chance being offered. It is this conflict between determinism and freewill that permeates several of the other extracts.
William Tallack2 is important because he encouraged the idea of probation in the United Kingdom in the 1880s by disseminating information about the American system of probation. The extract from his book Penological and Preventative Principles positively describes the mechanics of adult probation in Massachusetts which he argued should be adopted in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, the extract exposes a complicated mixture of Christian-based attitudes towards people who offend and a range of contradictory theories drawn from classical and neo-classical criminology. So, he opposed what he saw as the indulgence of prisoners in American prisons; he advocated punishment tempered by realistic humanitarianism (the doctrine of less eligibility); he abhorred socialist philanthropy yet theorised about poverty as a cause of crime; and believed that the physical and psychological defects caused by poverty were passed on genetically but that prisoners were morally responsible citizens who deserved the opportunity to reform.
A less equivocal position was taken by Ferri, who as Garland (1985) has argued, firmly rejected the notion of freewill and held a conclusive belief in the determinist position. As a consequence he was a strong advocate of a scientific approach to eliminating crime â what he described as the âgangrenous plague of crimeâ â which eschewed guilt and responsibility. For him, the appropriate focus was on the reasons an individual committed a crime and the treatment of that individual. But the extract from his lecture to students at the University of Naples is interesting also because of the trenchant criticism of punishment as a way of responding to crime. We can be critical of his contribution to the development of positivism, but his attitude towards punishment has a very modern resonance; his critique of the blind worship of punishment would make useful reading for politicians (on both sides of the Atlantic) responsible for the neo-punitive putsch of recent years. Similarly, Darrow takes a determinist position which almost seems to absolve the person committing a crime of any responsibility at all. Darrowâs piece is all the more remarkable because it was an address to prisoners, and while it might be easy to dismiss his total determinism it should be of interest to the modern reader because of what it offers to a debate about rehabilitation and punishment. In some senses, it is a remarkably modern treatise: it argues against the use of prison; it humanises and dignifies the prisoner; it challenges the difference between the non-offending and offending populations by highlighting white-collar crime and labelling; it argues against the efficacy of deterrence; and it locates the key to rehabilitation in the improvement of socio-economic conditions. It should be read, however, alongside Jenkinsâ salutary piece which provides a succinct critique of Darrowâs positivism and puts into sharp relief the paradoxical nature of his faith in the âmassive discretionary powersâ of the scientists.
Perhaps, it is Saleilles who steered the most effective course through the conflict between freewill and total determinism and pointed to the compromise inherent in most rehabilitative effort in the near hundred years since his book The Individualization of Punishment. He accepted what liberal-minded people might consider a truism today, that life chances are not the same for everyone and that, therefore, individual freedom and responsibility might vary from one person to another depending on factors such as a personâs state of health, pathology or mental disorder. For him the decision about how to respond to a personâs offending rests on what is discovered about the degree of moral freedom involved in the decision to commit a crime, and the right to opportunities of rehabilitation rests on the knowledge gained from scientific inquiry.
In effect, this compromise position combined with the growing dominance of science over religion facilitated the professionalisation (and in some senses the institutionalisation) of rehabilitation. At the core of this professionalisation was the body of knowledge provided by psychiatry (Rose 1985, 1996). During the final quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth psychological perspectives on deviance and abnormality triumphed over environmental arguments about their causes and solutions. Experts acknowledged the significance of the environment but when they theorised about crime and applied those theories to practice invariably they focused on changing the personality and behaviour of the individual. Psychology acquired its status through its ability to provide a relevant, coherent discourse which could be applied to the problems posed by deviant behaviour, and in the field of rehabilitation aspects of this discourse emerged in the shape and form of casework. Casework itself was crucial to the professionalisation of rehabilitative work because it provided the flexibility necessary to embrace the variety of folk theories (Vanstone 2007) which would inform that work through most of the twentieth century. As the writings of practitioners (Holmes, Chinn, Rankin, Poulton, Golding and Parkinson)3 included here show, its lineage stretches over a sixty-year period.
Holmesâs work is full of references to psychology, and although he acknowledges the social and legal dimensions of the problem of crime in general he gives weight to the psychology of deviant behaviour. However, his first extract is important because it demonstrates the importance of personal commitment to the individual in the attempt to rehabilitate, and like the other contributions from practitioners it reminds us of the significance of vocation in early work. Probably, Chinn was probationâs definer of casework and he describes the elements of probation work with children and in particular how inquiries into the character of the child were undertaken, and how after the probation order was made, (in an interestingly modern way), he negotiates a collaborative relationship with the parents. Rankin ruminates on the sociological causes and illustrates the practice and theory of probation by describing problem cases with proposed solutions gathered from officers around the country: two cases are included here. Casework-oriented insights permeate both, but Poultonâs extract reminds us that the spiritual element of efforts to rehabilitate survived well into the twentieth century. Some thirty years later, as can be seen in the Golding extract, psychotherapy was firmly entrenched in the writings of some probation officers. However, Golding is not only interesting because of his vivid description of the influence of psycho-analysis4 but because he prefigures a modern concern with effectiveness. The final account in this group of practitioners by Parkinson further exemplifies discourse around the theoretical paradigm drawn from the psychoanalysis. Moreover, he provides a very clear example of the idiosyncratic development of ad hoc personal theory in practice situations.
Of course, glossy representations of practice do not ensure professional status. Another important aspect of the story of the professionalisation of rehabilitative work is the creation of theoretical and practical blueprints combined with a framework of values. Leeson provided the first in 1914 which included a checklist for social inquiry with all the features of professional diagnosis and a call for a professional identity. The short extract here gives some practical illustrations of the practice requirements of such an identity. Over the next fifty years numerous writers contributed to the refinement of the casework model, and we have chosen what we believe to be among the most significant on both sides of the Atlantic: Le Mesurier who edited the first definitive handbook for probation in the United Kingdom; Glueck who produced a book of essays in honour of Herbert Parsons designed to show that probation required theory and practice from psychology, mental hygiene, social casework and adult education; Weiss who in the same volume posited probation work firmly within Mary Richmondâs social casework model; Gordon who was more explicitly critical of the deleterious effects of prison but delineated a clear set of principles upon which rehabilitative effort should be based; Schmideberg who articulated a psychotherapeutic theory for work with probationers; and Biestek who outlined arguably the most influential set of values on which the casework relationship should be founded.
Also in Part One we have included extracts related to themes that will be given a much more substantial airing in Part Two: first, innovative work which has always been a feature of practice in agencies like probation; and second the critical assault on the casework model incorporating as it did the treatment paradigm. The main point to note about the kind of innovation described by Mrs Cary (with her very early, simple groupwork approach to working with girls) and Bissell, Freeguard and McCullough (with their more theoretically informed groupwork) is that it was essentially dependent on the creativity, energy and motivation of individual practitioners and often happened despite and not because of agency support. The extract from Victor Sergeâs Men in Prison may be viewed as a very early attack on the casework/treatment model or certainly on the insidiously negative consequences of humanitarianism detailed by C. S. Lewis in Part Two. As Priestleyâs extract vividly illustrates it was a humanitarianism underpinned by a disciplinary agenda within prisons which was driven by religion. However, it was Huntâs treatise on the unconscious desire for discipline, authority and control in young people on probation or in B...
