Can individuals be reformed or rehabilitated in the prison? A persistent body of work indicates that rehabilitation and/or reformation through incarceration is illusory. Exceptions, according to this view, are the result of accident, not design. For many practitioners in corrections systems, the incarceration of criminals is a "fact" and the task of prisons is to isolate, deter, and punish and only then, perhaps reform the criminal. In "Can Prison Work?" Stephen Duguid contends that both critics and defenders of incarceration have erred in making the prisoner the object rather than the...

Can individuals be reformed or rehabilitated in the prison? A persistent body of work indicates that rehabilitation and/or reformation through incarceration is illusory. Exceptions, according to this view, are the result of accident, not design. For many practitioners in corrections systems, the incarceration of criminals is a "fact" and the task of prisons is to isolate, deter, and punish and only then, perhaps reform the criminal. In "Can Prison Work?" Stephen Duguid contends that both critics and defenders of incarceration have erred in making the prisoner the object rather than the...