Describe the origins of the justice model of corrections in the 1970s, and explain its development.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In the 1970s, individualism, rehabilitation, sentence indeterminacy, and parole all seemed to fall from grace and appeared to be on their way out. A national commission stated, "One of the movements we are currently witnessing in the criminal justice field is the trend toward the establishment of determinate or ‘fixed' sentencing of criminal offenders" (National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, 1973). The correctional system's failure to reduce the steadily increasing crime rate and its inability to reduce recidivism, rehabilitate offenders, or make predictive judgments about offenders' future behavior brought about public disillusionment, disappointment, and resentment. Concern also arose that wide and unfair disparities existed in sentencing based on the offender's race, socioeconomic status, and place of conviction (Petersilia, 2000b). The pendulum began to swing, and by the late 1970s it seemed to have moved 180 degrees from the rehabilitative ideal to the "just deserts" approach to criminal correction.In contrast to the rehabilitative ideal, the just deserts or justice model changes the focus of the system from the offender to the offense. Liberals and conservatives alike embraced determinate sentencing and the abolition of parole, but for different reasons (Cullen & Gilbert, 1982). The Vietnam War, the Kent State shootings, and the Attica prison uprising convinced many liberals that the state could not be trusted to administer rehabilitation in a just and humane manner. The indeterminate sentence was too vague and without due process protections to limit discretion. The just deserts approach was perceived as providing fair punishment. For conservatives, the 1974 publication by Robert Martinson was interpreted as noting that few correctional treatment programs worked and the indeterminate sentence, parole, and treatment programs were too "soft" on crime. Determinate sentencing and the "just deserts" approach were seen as a return to a punishment-oriented correctional system (Cullen & Gilbert, 1982).