Journal ArticleDOI
Judicial Rehabilitation and the ‘Clean Bill of Health’ in Criminal Justice
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TLDR
The authors argue that it may be better to forgive than forget past crimes, rather than burying past crimes as if they never happened, states should instead acknowledge and formally recognise that people can change, that good people can do bad things, and that all individuals should be able to move on from past convictions.Abstract:
Drawing on an important survey of European and Australian policies toward ‘judicial rehabilitation,’ this article makes the following arguments. First, the rehabilitation movement should return to the origins of the word ‘rehabilitation’ and focus at least as much on efforts to remove and relieve ex-prisoner stigma as on treatment and reform efforts. There will be no ‘rehabilitation revolution’ without this. Second, these efforts should involve active, not passive redemption. Rehabilitation processes that require almost a decade or more of ‘crime-free’ behaviour before forgiving an individual for his or her crimes are just and fair, but they miss the point of rehabilitation. Policies should encourage, support and facilitate good behaviour and not just reward it in retrospect. Third, rehabilitation should not just be done, but be ‘seen to be done,’ ideally in a ritualised format. This sends an important message to the individual and wider society. Finally, I argue that it may be better to forgive than forget past crimes. That is, rather than burying past crimes as if they never happened, states should instead acknowledge and formally recognise that people can change, that good people can do bad things, and that all individuals should be able to move on from past convictions.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. By Devah Pager. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. xiii+248. $25.00.
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Four forms of ‘offender’ rehabilitation: Towards an interdisciplinary perspective
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that debates about psychological rehabilitation have been hampered by a failure to engage fully with debates about at least three other forms of rehabilitation (legal, moral, and social) that emerge as being equally important in the process of desistance from crime.
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Rehabilitation: Beyond Nothing Works
TL;DR: By 1975, the long-standing rehabilitative ideal had collapsed, a demise that was sudden and advocated by conservatives and liberals alike, and through the prism of the author's personal involvement in the issue of correctional rehabilitation, what occurred from this time to the present is recounted.
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Indefinite punishment and the criminal record: stigma reports among expungement-seekers in illinois*
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present interview data from a comparative study of expungement-seekers who have petitioned the courts to remove their criminal records from public view, finding that participants with extensive versus minor criminal records offered different rationales explaining why the visible criminal record history unfairly burdened them.
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Reinventing Community Corrections
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that community corrections will reduce recidivism only if its use is viewed as a legitimate form of punishment and incentivized, which involves subsidizing the use of community sanctions and making communities pay to imprison offenders (e.g., a cap-and-trade system).
References
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Book
The Human Condition
TL;DR: The Human Condition as mentioned in this paper is a classic in political and social theory, The Human Condition is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely, it contains Margaret Canovan's 1998 introduction and a new foreword by Danielle Allen.
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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
TL;DR: The mass incarceration of a disproportionate number of black men amounts to a devastating system of racial control in the UK as much as in the US as mentioned in this paper, despite the triumphant dismantling of the Jim Crow laws, the system that once forced African-Americans into a segregated second-class citizenship still haunts and the criminal justice system still unfairly targets black men.
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Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life.
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Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives
TL;DR: Maruna as discussed by the authors argues that to truly understand offenders, we must understand the stories that they tell - and that in turn this story-making process has the capacity to transform lives, and provides a fascinating narrative analysis of the lives of repeat offenders who, by all statistical measures, should have continued on the criminal path but instead have created lives of productivity and purpose.
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Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies
TL;DR: In this paper, the denouncer must publicly claim and manage the status of bona fide representative of the group of witnesses, from this position he must name the perpetrator an outsider.