Qualitative Criminology (QC)
Abstract
"Criminology has documented the decline of rehabilitation in the age of get-tough approaches to crime and punishment. Therapy and punishment, however, are not mutually exclusive. Rehabilitation and traditional punishment have long co-existed in penal facilities. In this article, I examine the role of rehabilitation at Northeast Jail, a county jail in the U.S. that adhered to an ideology of rehabilitation. But Northeast Jail was, first and foremost, a penal facility where offenders were confined and punished. While staff and administrators at Northeast Jail routinely invoked a rhetoric of rehabilitation, they adhered to rules and engaged in punitive practices that interfered with the rehabilitative process. Based on 18 months of participant observation, I found that managing the irresolvable tensions between confinement and rehabilitation was part of the job for staff at Northeast Jail. I identify three strategies that staff used to negotiate these tensions: rehabilitation as rhetoric, role-switching, and deferring to punishment."
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Aiello, Brittnie L.
(2013)
"“We Incarcerate to Set Free:” Negotiating
Punishment and Rehabilitation in Jail,"
Qualitative Criminology (QC): Vol. 1:
No.
2, Article 5.
Available at:
https://dc.swosu.edu/qc/vol1/iss2/5
Included in
Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons, Legal Theory Commons, Other Law Commons, Other Legal Studies Commons