Crime & Delinquency

If the correctional administrator is to do his job of improving his agency's programs on the basis of experience, he will have to adopt some aspects of the scientist's role. To increase his own ef fectiveness (and that of his agency) he will need a questioning attitude, a determination to test his beliefs or hunches by de manding evidence for and against them, and an ability to plan programs in such a way that he will know at the end whether or not they achieved their missions.

The current ambivalence of our society toward crime causation is traced to two contradictory philosophical premises: the premise of free will (Classical View) and the premise of determinism (Positive View). It is suggested that these two fundamentally inconsistent views currently pervade our social institutions and our criminological theories. The resulting problems that face the criminological researcher are discussed , as are problems between researchers and action personnel . Promising research trends are indicated. Increased communication and collaboration between researchers and action personnel are seen as desirable vehicles for formulating and testing middle-range criminological theories.

If correctional administrators are to be more effective, they must improve their communication with researchers and thereby with the public. This can be accomplished by (1) compiling postrelease data on offenders, (2) focusing analysis of postrelease data on cost-effectiveness, (3) recognizing economic problems of releasees, (4) employing procedures which enhance prospects of knowing and acting upon the total circumstances and percep tions of offenders, and (5) proposing innovations as piecemeal experiments with efficient evaluation records.

Growing public concern over the operation of correctional systems has led to renewed interest in examining the relationship between research and correctional practice . Correctional research can be classified into five categories: (1) research describing the personal characteristics of offenders; (2) records-keeping and information systems; (3) controlled experimentation; (4) organi zational research; and (5) research aimed at effecting planned change . After reviewing the relationships between each type of research and actual correctional practices, the paper concludes that none has been successful in changing the underlying struc ture of correction and that correctional research has had the latent function of perpetuating the existing system. Nevertheless, research aimed at effecting planned change is providing admin istrators and researchers with valuable experience and thus , of the various types of research, offers the best hope of bringing about needed change.

Research has been acknowledged recently to be an integral part of the correctional system. To place correctional research in its proper perspective, however, we must overcome several myths and misconceptions as well as some misuses of statistics. Among the myths and misconceptions are the following: 1. Other programs are suitable for evaluation; ours is not. 2. We obtain suitable evaluation by informal methods. 3. We do not need a comparative base in evaluating programs. 4. Random assignment means that we place any inmate in a program and it is an injustice to some inmates. 5. All evaluations result in viewing a program as either a total success or a total failure. 6. Correctional knowledge grows by leaps and bounds. 7. Re search costs too much.

Justifications for the development of special correctional pro grams and for the choice of sentencing disposition for an individual offender are frequently based on claims of greater rehabilitative efficacy. While considerable evidence exists that some types of offenders have relatively more or less likelihood of recidivism than others, there is, as yet, almost no evidence that available correctional alternatives have any impact on those likelihoods. The article reviews findings from studies of correc tion in California for five critical choices in offender process ing : (1) imprisonment or probation, (2) length of stay in prison, (3) treatment program in prison, (4) intensity of parole or probation supervision, and (5) outright discharge from prison or release on parole. The authors conclude that variations in recidivism rates among these alternatives are, for the most part, attributable to initial differences among the types of offenders processed and that the remaining differences in violation rate between programs may be accounted for by differences in inter preting an event as a violation or in officially designating it as such. No evidence was found to support claims of superior re habilitative efficacy of one correctional alternative over another .

The novice researcher quickly learns that much of his effec tiveness depends on his ability to contact sources of data. This is especially true in correction and criminology when the researcher is interested in interviewing persons under the control of correctional agencies. Unless he is able to sell himself and his project, he may find his efforts thwarted for reasons quite unrelated to the theoretical or practical value of his research . Once he has obtained permission to carry out his project, he faces unique problems in collecting data because of the special ized nature of his subjects and the conditions under which he contacts them.

As a result of increasing public interest in the treatment of criminal offenders, the correctional administrator may find himself more and more frequently invited to address various organizations, to participate in criminological research, and to write articles for publication . Such opportunities offer a challenge to the administrator who, though not a speaker or writer by profession, wishes to ensure a successful presentation. He must be prepared not only to communicate convincingly, but also to meet the questions and arguments that his statements may engender. This article provides the administrator with the fundamental principles of public speaking and research prose.