The Myth Of Rehabilitation

• Date: 01 April 1972
• Author: Herman Schwartz
• Published date: 01 April 1972
• DOI: 10.1177/003288557205200106
• Subject Matter: Articles

The Myth Of Rehabilitation
A Case Study of a Wayward Minor Statute
By
Herman Schwartz
Professor of Law
State University of New York at Buffalo
The current concern over prisons has reinforced one of
our more expensive and pernicious bits of social mythology:
the notion that our so-called correctional system can rehabilitate
criminals. The fact is that it cannot do much and does poorly
that which it could do.
Apart from its feasibility outside prison, rehabilitation de-
signed to change personality seems virtually impossible inside
prison. Prisoners go to group therapy or other programs only
because that may look good to the Parole Board. They expect
little of value from such sessions and rightly so. Group counsel-
ling has been tried most extensively and expensively in Cali-
fornia and studies of that experience show that prisoners in
such programs do not have a significantly lower recidivism rate
than other inmates.
Even if we knew how to help people to change in funda-
mental ways, we have very few trained psychiatric personnel in
any part of the correctional system, whether it be probation,
prison or parole. For example, at Bedford Hills Reformatory for
Women in New York, there is one psychiatrist and one psy-
chologist for 300 women and there are no vocational counsellors.
Nationally, in 1965, there were 3,721 education and counselling
personnel for an average daily population of 362,900 adult of-
fenders. There is no reason to think the ratio has improved and
the personnel we do have now are usually too overworked or
jaded to do much.
&dquo;Rehabilitation&dquo; aimed at educational or vocational train-
ing could be more useful, but union restrictions, financial short-
ages, poor equipment, indifferent instructors, wages of 25 to 50
cents a day, licensing exclusions of ex-offenders and the general
community indifference to prisoners, all result in inadequate
training for useless or unavailable jobs, bitterness, cynicism and
recidivism. There is little dqmand for license-plate makers or
basket-weavers. A study reported by the American Friends
Service Committee in its publication, Struggle For Justice
found that in California only 12 % of parolees were in jobs
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related to their prison training, and that’s probably higher
than elsewhere.
The real result of the rehabilitation approach is, therefore,
not rehabilitation but rather the imposition of greater control
over prisoners and those who trouble society’s peace, and this
is well understood by its more realistic practitioners. In the
name of rehabilitation, for example, society often imprisons
young people for years for relatively inoffensive but irritating
behavior. Thus, almost all jurisdictions have &dquo;wayward minor&dquo;
or &dquo;incorrigible&dquo; child statutes which authorize sending truant
or runaway youngsters to prison for up to three or four years
&dquo;for their own good&dquo;. Almost all states permit increased sen-
tences for young people for minor offenses, such as shoplifting
and prostitution, in order to provide them with &dquo;education,
moral guidance and vocational training&dquo;,...