Rehabilitation in the Punitive Era: The Gap between Rhetoric and Reality in U.S. Prison Programs

Law & Society Review, Vol. 45, pp. 33-68, 2011

Posted: 4 Apr 2011

See all articles by Michelle S. Phelps

Michelle S. Phelps

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Dept of Sociology

Date Written: March 16, 2011

Abstract

Scholars of mass incarceration point to the 1970s as a pivotal turning point in U.S. penal history, marked by a shift toward more punitive policies and a consensus that “nothing works” in rehabilitating inmates. However, while there has been extensive research on changes in policy makers' rhetoric, sentencing policy, and incarceration rates, scholars know very little about changes in the actual practices of punishment and prisoner rehabilitation. Using nationally representative data for U.S. state prisons, this article demonstrates that there were no major changes in investments in specialized facilities, funding for inmate services-related staff, or program participation rates throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s. Not until the 1990s, more than a decade after the start of the punitive era, did patterns of inmate services change, as investments in programming switched from academic to reentry-related programs. These findings suggest that there is a large gap between rhetoric and reality in the case of inmate services and that since the 1990s, inmate “rehabilitation” has increasingly become equated with reentry-related life skills programs.

Keywords: prison, incarceration, rehabilitation

Suggested Citation

Phelps, Michelle S., Rehabilitation in the Punitive Era: The Gap between Rhetoric and Reality in U.S. Prison Programs (March 16, 2011). Law & Society Review, Vol. 45, pp. 33-68, 2011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1802529

Michelle S. Phelps (Contact Author)

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Dept of Sociology ( email )

909 Soc Sci Bld
267 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States

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