ABSTRACT
Reforming offenders has been a primary goal of incarceration at least since the invention of the penitentiary. The means by which reformers have sought to attain this goal, however, has changed dramatically since then. Early reformers emphasized isolation from the community, silence, religious exhortation and a strict regimen of hard work and severe discipline. But as the nineteenth century shaded into the twentieth religious exhortation gave way to therapeutic intervention. Strongly influenced by the then-emerging social sciences, a new penology was constructed on the assumption that criminality was the product of natural causes. These causes, it was asserted, could be discovered by applying the scientific method to the study of crime, and the knowledge thereby gained could be used to develop treatment programs. Each offender was to be diagnosed through detailed study and subjected to the appropriate prescribed treatment.1
