What is Criminal Rehabilitation?
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What is Criminal Rehabilitation? Lisa Forsberg1,2,3 · Thomas Douglas2,4
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract It is often said that the institutions of criminal justice ought or—perhaps more often— ought not to rehabilitate criminal offenders. But the term ‘criminal rehabilitation’ is often used without being explicitly defined, and in ways that are consistent with widely divergent conceptions. In this paper, we present a taxonomy that distinguishes, and explains the relationships between, different conceptions of criminal rehabilitation. Our taxonomy distinguishes conceptions of criminal rehabilitation on the basis of (i) the aims or ends of the putatively rehabilitative measure, and (ii) the means that may be used to achieve the intended end. We also explore some of the implications of each conception, some of the payoffs of a taxonomy of the kind we offer, and some areas for future work. Keywords Criminal rehabilitation · Moral education · Moral improvement · Criminal justice · Reform It is often said that the institutions of criminal justice ought or—perhaps more often—ought not to rehabilitate criminal offenders. Such claims can be found in academic literature—for example, from criminology and penal theory.1 They can
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See e.g. Andrew Ashworth, Andrew von Hirsch, Julian Roberts (eds.), Principled Sentencing: Readings on Theory and Policy, 3rd ed (Hart Publishing, 2009); Peter Raynor and Gwen Robinson, “Why help offenders? Arguments for rehabilitation as a penal strategy”, European Journal of Probation 1 (2009), pp. 3–20. * Lisa Forsberg [email protected] 1
British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, St Cross Building, St Cross Road, Oxford OX1 3UL, UK
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Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, Suite 8, Littlegate House, 16/17 St. Ebbe’s St., Oxford OX1 1PT, UK
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Somerville College, University of Oxford, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HD, UK
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Hugh Price Fellow, Jesus College, Turl Street, Oxford OX1 3DW, UK
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Criminal Law and Philosophy
also be found in policy documents and legal judgments.2 But what, exactly, does criminal rehabilitation consist in? The term is often used without a clear referent, and in ways that are consistent with widely divergent conceptions. As Ted Honderich notes, ‘a number of views [recommend] punishment or some other practice for dealing with crime on the ground that it will reform, correct, rehabilitate, treat, improve or cure offenders’, but ‘[o]ften these doctrines have been ill-defined’.3 This imprecision cannot be excused on the basis that, in practice, the boundaries of the concept of rehabilitation are intuitively clear, for there are, in fact, many grey zones. When prison authorities provide psychological therapies to prisoners suffering from depression, are they rehabilitating those prisoners? When a parole board requires that a paroled sex offender undergoes ‘chemical castration’, is it imposing a form of rehabilitation? Is imprisonment itself rehabilitat
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