The Return of Rehabilitation

Until recently, rehabilitation seemed more a forsaken aim than a likely outcome of imprisonment. Although the first rule of the Prison Rules 1964 stated, “The purpose of the training and treatment of convicted prisoners shall be to encourage and assist them to lead a good and useful life,” *the ideology of training and treatment did not last. By 1974 the American researcher Robert Martinson was denouncing rehabilitation programmes for prisoners in his paper What Works, in which he came to the conclusion that “nothing works.” Five years later the May Committee’s inquiry into the Prison Service announced that “the rhetoric of treatment and training has had its day and should be replaced.”

Fast forward almost two decades to Michael Howard’s 1993 war cry, “prison works.” The emphasis was now on retribution and public protection, with no mention of rehabilitation. That prison only works while criminals are inside – and the vast majority are released as bad or worse than they were when they went in – was not an issue for discussion. But in some respects, Howard might have had a point – an increasing number of offenders are born to the criminal lifestyle and one must ask whether it is really possible for such people to be rehabilitated if they have never been “habilitated” in the first place. Whatever, the prison population rose by over 50% and a couple of headline-hitting escapes ensured that security became the over-riding consideration throughout the prison estate.

Now, the tide appears to be turning. The need for treatment and training – the need to rehabilitate – is being recognised once again. So much so that Lord Bingham, LCJ, has suggested that courts should be given powers to order persistent offenders to undergo offending behaviour programmes while they are in prison and those who refuse to co-operate should