Reform in the Making: The Implementation of Social Policy in Prison

(Paperback)

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Is it time to give up on rehabiliting criminals Record numbers of Americans are going to prision, and most of them will eventually return to society with a high chance of being repaet offenders. But a decision to abandon rehabilitation programmes would be premature warns Ann Chih Lin, who finds that little attention has been given to how these programmes are actually implemented and why they tend to fail. Here, she not only supplies much-needed information on the process of programme implementation but she also considers its social context - the daily realities faced by prison staff and inmates. By offering an in-depth look at common rehabilitation programmes currently in operation - education, job training and drug treatment - and examining how they are used of misused, Lin offers a practical approach to understanding their high failure rate and how the situation could be improved.

Reviews

"An important and convincing book... A welcome addition to the literature on both the implementation of social policy and the study of prisons... Thoughtful and well-conceived."--Malcolm M. Feeley, Law and Politics Book Review "Lin's acceptance of the problem of any general rehabilitative program in prison is her strong point, and the great value of this book. Putting grand theory behind helps to point the way out of the miasma and double-bind of prison life."--Larry E. Sullivan, Contemporary Sociology

Author Bio

Ann Chih Lin is Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the University of Michigan. With Sheldon Danziger, she is the coeditor of "The Social Contexts of Urban Poverty: Qualitative Research on the African-American Experience".