ABSTRACT
Thirty-plus years ago, a working group called the Citizens’ Study Committee on Offender Rehabilitation submitted its final report to the then Governor of Wisconsin, in the mid-western United States (Wisconsin Council on Criminal Justice 1972). The group suggested to the governor the phasing out of Wisconsin’s prisons over a five-year period. In support of this no-nonsense proposal, the group argued that:
No amount of resources, however great, can enhance a convicted citizen’s chances for productive re-entry to a democratic society when that citizen has been confined in an institution too large to provide individual services, too geographically remote to provide vital life contacts, and too regimented to foster self-esteem.
