In 1975, the legitimacy of correctional rehabilitation made the first step toward restoration. Ted Palmer, a psychologist researcher, doubted the empirical validity of Martinson’s conclusion and thus examined “whether this conclusion takes account of the facts that were presented” (Palmer, 1975, p. 133). Palmer (1975) analysed Martinson (1974) and developed a “systematic rebuttal of Martinson’s ‘nothing works’ conclusion” (Cullen, 2005, p. 9). According to Cullen (2005), his study presented three important conclusions. The first was the empirical refutation
28
of Martinson’s statement that his study contained “only ‘few and isolated’ instances of treatment effectiveness” (Cullen, 2005, p. 9). In his article, Palmer broke down 82 individuals studies, cited in Martinson (1974), into four categories that indicated different degrees of effectiveness. Then he counted how many studies presented outcomes that reflected either “positive,” “partly positive,” “ambiguous,” or “negative” effect on recidivism. The findings showed that 39 studies of 82 had either positive or partly positive effect on recidivism. In other words, rehabilitation efforts worked in 48 % of the studies in Martinson (1974).
The second important conclusion that could be drawn from Palmer (1975) was the link between Martinson’s methodology and his conclusion that nothing worked. In this regard, Palmer (1975) noted that Martinson and his colleagues set a rigorous criterion for “success.” That is, only a “treatment method” that always worked was considered as a “successful treatment.” Therefore, when Martinson found that within each treatment method some programmes were effective and some were not (i.e., inconsistent effect), he jumped to conclusion that one cannot expect that any treatment program would be reliable enough to reduce recidivism through rehabilitation (Palmer, 1975).
Martinson’s qualitative judgment thus affected his interpretation. In fact, while Martinson interpreted the negative results in each treatment method as evidence of failure, Palmer interpreted the positive results in each method as evidence of success. Within the social context of the 1970s, however, Martinson’s analytic framework could not be considered as an innocent perspective or an “inaccurate description of individual study” (Palmer, 1975, p. 150). Indeed, Martinson’s criterion of success might have reflected a “confirmation bias” in his work: a deliberately searched for evidence that would confirm his belief that nothing works to reform offenders (Kahneman, 2011).
The third conclusion was that Martinson’s expected each treatment method to have the same effect “for all or nearly all offenders” (Palmer, 1975, p. 150). That is, Palmer pointed at the fact that Martinson ignored the possibility that “some methods are nevertheless of value to at least some offenders” (Palmer, 1975, p. 149). Palmer (1975) then suggested an alternative perspective on the observed effects. He proposed that the findings reflected a pattern that was influenced by other intervening factors such as offender characteristics, type of treatment setting, and type of worker or service provider. Palmer (1975) called then to researchers to move from searching methods of treatment that hold a “answer” for all offenders to research
29
that focus on “which methods work best for which types of offenders, and under what conditions or in what types of setting” (Palmer, 1975, p. 150).
In the 1970s, Palmer’s work refuted Martinson’s article but did not inspire the correctional field to question the underlying premises of the “nothing works doctrine”. Indeed, in times when this doctrine became “a matter of almost religious faith” a single narrative review could be easily ignored (Cullen, 2013, p. 329). Martinson (1974) thus remained the “final word” for many criminologists, an essay that coincided conveniently “empirical reality and their ideological preferences” (Cullen & Gendreau, 2000, p. 131).
In 1979, Paul Gendreau and Robert Ross joined Palmer in challenging Martinson’s doctrine. They stated that those who embraced Martinson’s conclusion not only ignored critical literature but also seemed indifferent to the fact that Martinson’s research team relied on research published before 1967 (Ziv, 2016). Gendreau and Ross (1979) then presented an extensive narrative review of the literature on correctional treatment: 95 studies published between 1973 and 1978. Their review presented clear evidence of success in correctional rehabilitation and emphasised the important advances in rehabilitation ignored by Martinson. Cullen and Gendreau (2000) drew three major conclusions from this article.
First, Gendreau and Ross (1979) argued for a consensus among behavioural scientists that criminal behaviour is learned. They claimed that Martinson incorrectly premised that “criminal offenders are incapable of relearning or of acquiring new behaviours” (Gendreau & Ross, 1979, pp. 465-466). Their review then presented how behaviourally oriented programmes successfully changed offenders’ behaviour in various situations and services. Specifically, they found a reduction in recidivism in treatment programmes that prompted and maintained behaviour through manipulation of rewards or reinforcements and in programmes that also focused on offenders’ observation and imitation. In addition, the review showed better results for programmes that employed a combination of treatment methods (i.e., multimodal approach) rather than relying on a single method (Gendreau & Ross, 1979). The authors concluded that this finding reflected different learning styles among individuals and thus the importance of matching individual’s learning ability and the delivered service (Gendreau & Ross, 1979). Second, Gendreau and Ross (1979) followed Palmer (1975) and emphasised the importance of the interactions between individual differences, type of treatment, and setting. Their review found that such interaction increased “dramatically” the success of treatment methods (for
30
example, in interventions that employed diversion, behavioural contracts, family interaction, contingency management, probation, or counselling) (Gendreau & Ross, 1979, p. 486).
Third, Gendreau and Ross (1979) considered lack of therapeutic integrity as a major cause of programmes’ failure (Cullen & Gendreau, 2000). Their review thus called on researchers to pay attention to the link between the original theoretical plan of the program and the actual way that it was eventually carried out. Specifically, they emphasized the following questions: “to what extent do treatment personnel actually adhere to the principles and employ the techniques of the therapy they purport to provide? To what extent are the treatment staff competent? How hard do they work? How much is treatment diluted in the correctional environment so that it becomes treatment in name only?” (Gendreau & Ross, 1979, p. 467).
In 1987, Gendreau and Ross continued to challenge the nothing works doctrine and to encourage the correctional field “to uncover what it is about programmes that work that distinguishes them from programmes that do not work” (Cullen & Gendreau, 2000, p. 129). They conducted another extensive narrative review of 130 studies published between 1981 and 1987. Their report analysed the findings in various types of correctional interventions (e.g., biomedical, diversion, early/family intervention, education, getting tough, individual differences, parole/probation, restitution, and work) and offender populations (e.g., sex offenders, substance abusers, and violent offenders).
The findings in Gendreau and Ross (1987) presented updated support of correctional rehabilitation. In addition, the review indicated that the ability of correctional intervention programmes to reform offenders relied on “principles underlying effective rehabilitation”. In this regard, although the review did not provide a structured guidance, an effort to evolve principles of effective correctional intervention could be drawn from their analysis.
First, as in the 1979 review, Gendreau and Ross (1987) continue to demonstrate that effective programmes relied on learning theories. Moreover, the updated review clearly showed the progress that occurred during the 1980s in this field of knowledge. That is effective treatment programmes designed to change both observed behaviour and the way in which offenders think (i.e., offenders’ cognitive process and skills). Specifically, the review indicated several successful programmes designed to enhance offenders’ problem-solving skills and to redirect their beliefs, values, and attitudes (Gendreau & Ross, 1987).
Second, Gendreau and Ross (1987) continued to advocate the interaction of individual differences, type of treatment, and settings as a factor that influenced the results. This review
31
thus investigated this premise by examining only treatment programmes “in which a component of individual difference was the primary concern” (Gendreau & Ross, 1987, p. 371). One type of findings indicated a link between offender’s personality or cognitive reasoning structure and antisocial behaviour. Another type of findings demonstrated the importance of the match between offender’s learning ability and the level of functioning required in a program (e.g., taking into account offender’s low cognitive functioning). The last type of findings was the connection between offenders’ level of risk (to recidivate) and the effectiveness of treatment programmes. This pattern of results reflected a potential “to be the most potent individual-difference factor” (Gendreau & Ross, 1987, p. 373). Specifically, the review showed that difference in recidivism “depending on whether high-risk cases received intensive services” and whether low-risk cases received” relatively minimal attention” (Gendreau & Ross, 1987, p. 373).
Third, Gendreau and Ross (1987, p. 395) noted that the challenge for the correctional field would be to implement and maintain the scientific knowledge within “the social service delivery systems provided routinely by government and private agencies”. In this regard, they recommended using risk assessment tools that would be represented by dynamic “personal needs” (e.g., degree of substance abuse, criminal thinking). In addition, they recommended assigning high-risk offenders to a programme that would be tailored to fit their abilities and learning style.
Overall, Gendreau and Ross (1987) showed that by the late 1980s many practitioners and researchers took rehabilitation seriously and focused on the developing methods, strategies, and approaches that resulted in effective treatment programmes. Nevertheless, in those days, the significant advances in the correctional rehabilitation field only scratched the deeply entrenched “nothing works doctrine”. That is, many criminologist and policy-makers already decided that treatment was ineffective and tended to dismiss the reviews as biased studies (Cullen, 2005). They accused thus that authors of reviews presented selective studies, employed subjective interpretation, presented the findings in a misleading way, and ignored other study characteristics that might provide an alternative explanation to the results (Cullen & Gendreau, 2000).
32 2.5.2. Meta-Analyses
By the end of the 1980s, there were already more than 400 controlled evaluations of intervention with offenders, and at least 40 % of the better-controlled studies “reported positive effects” (Andrews, et al., 1990). According to Palmer (1992), this ongoing research effort reflected a developing consensus that rehabilitation might be useful after all. However, the accumulating number of studies made it more and more difficult to conduct large narrative reviews that would reflect the findings from all the available research (Ziv, 2016). Such an effort was important because narrative reviews of only a subset of studies could not overcome the alleged flaws that the conclusions were contaminated by a subjective selection and interpretation (Whitehead & Lab, 1989).
Gaining more legitimacy for rehabilitation thus required a new, systematic way to address the findings from a large body of literature. That is, a reliable way was needed to overcome Martinson’s (1974, p. 22) observation. Fortunately, in the early 1990s, a new method of assessing extant studies emerged: the technique of meta-analysis. Meta-analysis was used by scholars to provide a quantitative answer to the issues of what works in correctional rehabilitation (Palmer, 1992).
In a nutshell, meta-analysis is a statistical method to summarise the findings of multiple independent research, which can run into the hundreds, on the same topic. Lipsey and Wilson (2001, p. 1), for example, define meta-analysis as a “form of survey research in which research reports, rather than people, are surveyed”.
Within the field of corrections, the quantitative nature of the meta-analytic technique was crucial in changing sceptical views about the efficacy of interventions. In contrast to the narrative reviews, the interpretation of findings in the meta-analyses was short and clear. That is, the outcome in those reviews was simply a number, the effect size of the defined categories. Indeed, the quantitative nature of meta-analysis produced an outcome that was not only simple to grasp but also allowed more objective interpretation of the findings. Sceptical scholars thus could use the code form and the criteria for the inclusion of studies to replicate the decision making that led to particular conclusions (Ziv, 2016).
In addition, the meta-analytic technique was established as a better alternative to the vote counting method. That is, while the vote-counting method summarised the knowledge by counting the number of studies that found a positive effect on recidivism, the meta-analytic technique provided a much more sophisticated tool to assess the data (Ziv, 2016). Overall, then,
33
the meta-analytic technique offered a reliable methodology to face the general question: does offenders can be rehabilitated? Moreover, it could also clarify the pattern of results and thus answer the more specific questions: What does not work? What does work? And what factors moderate the outcome in correctional interventions?
Since the publication of the first meta-analysis research review that focused on the treatment of offenders (Garrett, 1985), approximately 100 meta-analyses were used to assess the effectiveness of correctional treatment (McGuire, 2013). Those reviews covered various of areas such as juvenile offenders, offense type or offender classification (e.g., sex offenders, violent offenders, drink driving, personally disorder), types of punitive sanctions, and specific types of interventions (e.g., education and vocation, socio-therapeutic prison, cognitive- behavioural, family-based, school-based, substance abuse, restorative justice) (McGuire, 2013). In addition, reviews have been designed to test specific hypotheses (e.g., the differential impact of gender, ethnic minority, age group, or adherence to certain correctional principles). Overall, these meta-analyses provided one key finding that challenged Martinson’s “nothing works” doctrine: across all types of interventions, the average effect size showed reduction in recidivism.
2.6. Conclusion
This chapter followed the impact of the rehabilitative ideal in four historical periods. Since its development, the rehabilitative ideal inspired a correctional model that survived one and a half centuries. First, in the early 1800s, this paradigm was built on a broad consensus that the correctional system had the capacity to reform offenders through a sincere and honest human intention. Second, for seven decades, individuals shared a consensus about the ability to change criminality, the goals of rehabilitation, and the way to achieve those goals. Third, however, in the late 1960s, the ideal of rehabilitation went into a sudden decline. This decline in legitimacy followed the rejection of the approach in correction and existing therapeutic principle. The fourth historical period began in the late 1970s. Since then, advocates of rehabilitation have struggled to reaffirm the legitimacy of rehabilitation as a major correctional goal. Specifically, they worked to confirm the notion that offenders are able to change their behaviour and to produce reliable evidence that the correctional system is capable to achieve such change in a planned intervention. The restoration of the rehabilitative ideal thus was a long process that ultimately relied on the evidence-based approach to corrections. The next chapter focusses on the theoretical philosophy of rehabilitation.
34 CHAPTER 3