The Concern of the Rehabilitation Perspective, Essay Example

Fundamentally, the concern of the rehabilitation perspective is cure: curing the offender of the underlying tendencies and ideations that are responsible for their criminal behaviors. The idea is that rather than focus on punishing the offender by incapacitating them or levying punitive fines, wherever and whenever possible the offender should be treated, cured of their anti-social and problematic tendencies in order to enable them to rejoin civil society. The three key factors determining how this approach is to be implemented are risk, defined in terms of the risks of offender recidivism; needs, specifically the skills and abilities that the offender needs to acquire in order to function in civil society, and responsivity of the offender to the attempts at rehabilitation.

In the contemporary justice system, a good example of the use of the rehabilitation approach is Moral Reconation Therapy, a kind of moral therapy aimed at helping offenders to change their ways of thinking about morals and ethics. Anger management programs are another excellent example. With anger management programs, the goal is to help offenders gain control of their emotions, and find better, more productive and less harmful ways in which to channel their anger. Even the use of alcohol education classes for DUI offenders demonstrates the influence of the rehabilitation approach at work, since offenders are taught about the influence of alcohol on the brain, and encouraged to change the way that they think about the consumption of alcohol and driving.

Thus, the rehabilitation approach focuses on changing people, teaching them new skills and new ways of looking at things. An advocate of this approach would probably sentence Michael Pickens to moral therapy, such as Moral Reconation Training, in order to help him to examine his moral reasoning and ethical foundations. The central idea here would be to help him to gain an understanding of why he thought it was justifiable to defraud his victims, and to emerge with a changed moral zeitgeist, one that would lead to sincere remorse for his actions and a desire to be a better person in the future.

Victim awareness programs might be another sentencing option for Michael Pickens under the rehabilitation approach. Here, the idea would be to help him understand how his actions caused others to experience pain, hurt, and hardship. The idea here would be to help him cultivate empathy for those whom he has wronged, which, similar to Moral Reconation Therapy, could lead him to a profoundly changed moral zeitgeist. Finally, with regards to his substance abuse, here the idea would be to ensure that Pickens is equipped to deal with his substance abuse problem: specifically, to ensure that he is equipped with the life skills that he needs to find healthful alternatives to the substances that he has been abusing.

Overall, I find this perspective compelling in many ways: I like the emphasis on treatment over retribution and other, far more benighted approaches. That said, I think that a shortcoming of this approach is that it can be too ‘soft on crime’, too concerned with rehabilitating offenders who may, in some cases, be extremely dangerous and untrustworthy people. Thus, it seems to me that it needs to be balanced, at least with regards to more dangerous offenders and more severe offenses, with other approaches.