In short, this is 'less a panacea than a Pandora's box': 'a criminal
justice system rooted in retributive principles will be neither more
just, more humane, nor more efficient than a system that at least
ideologically, had offender reform as its goal. '12 Cullen and Gilbert's
new agenda for real liberals (and radicals) is to reaffirm rehabilitation.
This time round, it is supposed to be a rehabilitation properly
tempered by the need to curb the coercive powers of the state.
We are told that, instead of giving way to despair, liberals should
realize that rehabilitation is the only ideology which can be used
to resist conservative policy and the only one which commits the
state to care for the offender's needs and welfare. It is not enough
for justice-model liberals to talk about the 'right' to decent conditions
and treatment, nor to proclaim humanity as an end itself.
This would only open criminal-justice politics to a struggle which
the powerless are bound to lose. If the state was neglectful when it
was supposed to provide services (rehabilitation was never tried
properly) it will be even less diligent when it has no mandate to do
so.
This is a persuasive programme. If I were interested in defending
traditional liberalism I would not have any hesitation in
joining this campaign. But then again I would have had no hesitation
in joining the attacks on rehabilitation in the late sixties and
proclaiming the value of justice (this is just what I did!). And I
also might have supported the Fabian version of rehabilitation in
Britain at the end of the fifties, spoken up for the Progcessives in