Abstract
Offender rehabilitation has a long-standing tradition of being scrutinized by academics, policy makers, the media, and, consequently, public opinion. When in the 1970s the first systematic evaluations of offender rehabilitation programs were published, the results were so daunting that the question evolved from “What works?” to “Does anything work at all?” (Lipsey & Cullen, 2007). This suggestive question was followed by a multitude of treatment studies and led to dozens of meta-analyses, which investigated the effectiveness of offender rehabilitation programs—in and out of prison—as well as more punitive programs, such as boot camps. Although general opinion tends to favor rehabilitative over punitive measures—at least in the case of juvenile offenders (Nagin, Piquero, Scott, & Steinberg, 2006)—the latter still gains support from policy makers.
Among the factors considered in the discussion of the two measures are cost effectiveness and the possible effects on inmate violence. Cutting costs in the criminal justice system by reducing amenities for inmates, such as stripping them of the possibility of lifting weights or doing other forms of sport, is perceived as being cost efficient. At the same time, as pointed out by Dr. David Bierie in this issue of the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology (IJOTCC), reducing amenities is considered as having a deterrent effect on violent behavior by simply making the prison a more unpleasant living environment and thus motivating offenders to avoid reincarceration. Following this logic, offenders would also be more likely to follow prison rules and stay clear of in-prison violence.
Dr. Bierie used survey data collected from 114 U.S. federal prisons and information gathered from more than 1,700 prison staff to investigate the question of whether physical prison conditions have an impact on inmate violence. Investigating this question has several important implications. If the prevalence of serious inmate violence can be reduced by making prisons a more unpleasant environment, it is quite obvious that this strategy—aside from ethical considerations—would undoubtedly have a certain appeal to prison management. Reducing violence by reducing costs is a very attractive formula. Following this line of thought, preventing violence is not only a generic value in itself, but it is also an economic value because severe forms of violence can lead to costs of more than US$17 million per offense (DeLisi et al., 2010). However, if prison violence cannot be reduced by making it a more unpleasant living environment, the most attractive cost reduction factor has been missed out. As diligently pointed out by Dr. Bierie, unpleasant living conditions, depriving inmates from sports and other activities, could have a detrimental effect on their mental status, which in turn could lower the threshold for aggression that could ultimately exacerbate to severe forms of violence.
In the seminal work of Lipsey and Cullen (2007) who conducted a systematic review of the meta-analyses that addressed the effectiveness of punitive and rehabilitative measures, the authors not only found rehabilitative measures to be more efficient than punitive programs but also found that even the best performing punitive program was not nearly as efficient as the least efficient rehabilitative intervention. To make things even worse for adherents of punitive programs, the least efficient programs even increased the rate of recidivism by as much as 26%. In other words, punitive programs that focus on deterrence can cause harm.
Resuming the economic line of thought, an increase in the prevalence of severe violence (in prisons), even by a small margin, can easily debunk a program that was beforehand considered as being cost efficient and lead to the opposite conclusion that it is, instead, very expensive. Scared Straight Programs are an excellent example for this, illustrating how a program that was considered to be advantageous in terms of direct investment proved quickly to be very expensive. Aos, Miller, and Drake (2006) carried out an intensive cost-benefit analysis of different programs that were used in criminal justice. While the most cost-efficient program resulted in a net gain per participant of more than US$77,000, Scared Straight was the program with the least favorable cost-benefit ratio, resulting in a net loss of more than US$14,000. In summary, there is evidence that solely punitive measures are more likely to increase the rate of reoffending and cause substantial material and immaterial costs to society.
Although Dr. Bierie did not investigate reoffending, the results of his study match the findings of several meta-analyses, as he was able to demonstrate that poor physical conditions in prisons correlated with higher rates of serious violence. Hence, being (too) punitive not only increases reoffending in the sense of an abstract figure of failure of the criminal justice system, but it also leads to more victims—inside and outside of prison walls.