Word: criminalled
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Wilson said last week that "rehabilitation cannot be a replacement for punishment." The convicted criminal must be punished under "clear and legal boundaries," and rehabilitation is only an optional concomitant to punishment. "But," he writes, "the prospects for rehabilitation should not be allowed to govern the length of sentence." Implicit...
This analysis has serious shortcomings. Wilson resists attempts to examine the psychological causes of crime, relegating alienation and frustration to lesser, indirect roles. Also ignored are the presence of sub-cultures in which certain kinds of criminal behavior are more socially acceptable than in other communities. Housebreaking, a serious crime...
Wilson's theories ignore the basic corruption of a society in which, as the Massachusetts Governor's Advisory Committee on Corrections reported this summer, "Street crime is less prevalent and far smaller in dollar value than white collar and organized crime." Low income neighborhoods do not contain criminal elements that...
If one accepts Wilson's studies and analysis, there is a certain internal consistency to his arguments. But it disintegrates when one examines the means of punishment. American prisons--especially the state and county institutions where most convicted street criminals serve their sentences--are brutalizing and dehumanizing beyond toleration. A...
Wilson often tailors his arguments to his audience: his writings define punishment to include progressive programs but then he states that none has been successful; he changes emphasis from violent crimes--where his theories have more legitimacy--to small-time street crime in general. But his attacks on social reforms...