Rehabilitation and Deviance (Routledge Revivals) by Philip Bean

Author:Philip Bean [Bean, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415635899
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2014-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

5

SENTENCING AND THE SOCIAL ENQUIRY REPORT

Earlier chapters were concerned with relating rehabilitation to social pathology and to examining the effects of this model. In this and the next two chapters the rehabilitative ideal will be examined as it currently operates within the penal system. In this chapter special attention will be given to the sentencing process, for it is here that the major conflicts about rehabilitation often take place. The courts – along with the police and prison officals – have traditionally become the main targets for attack, being characterized as essentially punitive and as sentencing according to outmoded principles. In their evidence to the Royal Commission on the Penal System the Association of Psychiatric Social Workers argued that adult courts are passing sentences without sufficient psychiatric information, whilst the Fabian Society was convinced of the sterility of the punitive-retributive attitude which still prevails in too many of our adult courts. The British Psychological Society put the matter more succinctly when it said that the sentencing policies of the courts exercise a considerable influence upon the penal system by determining which category of penal treatment an offender shall be allocated.1 The problem of classification is therefore central to the whole field of penological research because only then can there ‘be improvements in methods of sentencing and allocation’. The courts provide the input into the penal system. The rehabilitative ideal requires those inputs to be classified, but classified in such a way as to fit the ‘needs’ of the offender to the treatment facilities. ‘Needs’ would of course be determined by that ideology, hence the comments of the Association of Psychiatric Social Workers that courts are passing sentence without sufficient psychiatric information.

In short, the proponents of the rehabilitative ideal require sentences to be individualized. Again, the term is deceptively simple, for what does ‘individualized’ mean? Presumably it is not related to offences, nor to a standard set of variables which courts should consider before passing sentence, and which Roger Hood called ‘equality of considerations’. ‘Individualized’ in this context means being concerned with the offender’s personal and social history where the offence is only one factor and no more important than the psycho-social ones. David Matza describes individualized justice as follows:

Spokesmen for individualized justice do not suggest that offence is irrelevant, rather that it is one of the many considerations that are to be used in arriving at a sound disposition. Offence like many other forms of behaviour is to be taken as an indication or symptom of the [offender’s] personal and social disorder. The principles of individualized justice suggest that disposition is to be guided by a full understanding of the client’s personal and social character and by his individual needs. This view is well captured by the slogan which suggests that nowadays the treatment fits the individual whereas in olden days the punishment fitted the crime.2

Matza’s account captures the essence of individualized justice. He also points to a number of additional problems. The first is to decide which social and personal characteristics are the relevant ones.

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