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Article: The Persistent Prison? Rethinking Decarceration and Penal Reform.
- Article from:
- Corrections Today
- Article date:
- July 1, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 American Correctional Association, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Efforts to reform correctional policy and practice usually are met with cries of "nothing works." This criticism, once reserved for advocates of rehabilitative programming, now also is used to silence advocates of alternatives to incarceration.
The '90s version of "nothing works" is the charge that alternatives serve only to widen the net of social control. Adherents of this view claim alternatives fail to reduce prison populations and place more people under correctional supervision.
Until recently, community corrections advocates have not been able to refute this argument with solid empirical data. Now, Maeve W. McMahon, Ph.D., of the Centre of ...