Institutional Corrections, Rehabilitation, Desistance & Deterrence

Vocabulary practice flashcards based on the September 14 lecture on Institutional Corrections, Rehabilitation, Desistance & Deterrence.

Total Institution

A place where many people live and work together, separated from wider society for a significant period, while their daily lives are organized under formal institutional control (concept formulated by Erving Goffman).

Normativity

The rules, standards, and expectations that define what is considered normal or acceptable behaviour.

Batch Living

An institutional condition identified by Goffman where people perform everyday activities together in large groups on a shared schedule and are treated similarly.

Binary Management

The emergence of two distinct, separate social worlds within an institution—staff and residents or inmates—who interact officially but hold little personal understanding, often fostering antagonistic stereotypes.

Mortification Process

A series of institutional experiences (such as head shaving, uniforms, institutional numbers, mandatory bathing, and property confiscation) that humiliate, degrade, or weaken a person's previous sense of identity.

Surveillance (Goffman)

A condition in total institutions where individuals know they might be observed but cannot predict when, reducing personal privacy and creating a sense of insecurity.

Panopticon

An eighteenth-century prison design created by Jeremy Bentham where cells are arranged around a central observation tower to promote reformation through constant, unverifiable surveillance.

Self-Regulation (Panopticon)

The process by which individuals govern and control their own behaviour because they believe they may be observed at any time, even when no guard is visibly present.

Strain Theory

Robert K. Merton's 1938 sociological theory proposing that deviant behaviour arises when society encourages success, wealth, and status, but fails to provide equal access to legitimate means for achieving those goals.

Anomie (Merton)

A state of weakened or unclear social norms where people experience uncertainty regarding how to attain socially valued goals.

Overweening Ambition

Excessive ambition or an exaggerated desire for success and status.

Strain (Merton)

The psychological and social pressure experienced when socially encouraged goals cannot be attained through accepted, legitimate means.

Conformity (Merton)

A mode of adaptation in which an individual accepts societal goals and legitimate means, pursuing success through socially approved methods.

Innovation (Merton)

A mode of adaptation where an individual accepts societal success goals but rejects legitimate means, using prohibited or illegal methods (such as theft) to secure wealth.

Ritualism (Merton)

A mode of adaptation where an individual abandons or lowers major success goals while continuing to strictly follow legitimate rules and routines.

Retreatism (Merton)

A mode of adaptation where an individual rejects both societal success goals and legitimate means, withdrawing completely from conventional social expectations.

Rebellion (Merton)

A mode of adaptation where an individual rejects existing societal goals and means and actively attempts to replace them with a new social system containing different rules and goals.

Secondary Adjustment

Ways in which individuals adapt to an institution to maintain control, independence, or selfhood instead of passively accepting their assigned institutional role.

Colonization vs. Conversion

In institutional secondary adjustment, colonization involves adapting to or superficially appearing to accept institutional life, whereas conversion entails genuinely accepting institutional values.

Rehabilitation (Modern Correctional Meaning)

The process of helping offenders develop the skills, attitudes, and circumstances required to live in society without reoffending.

Medical / Therapeutic Model of Corrections

A paradigm shift around the turn of the twentieth century that treated incarcerated people as patients capable of being diagnosed and treated, rather than as mere sinners requiring moral correction.

Indeterminate Sentencing

A sentencing structure where the duration of imprisonment is not fixed, allowing release decisions to depend on an offender's reform, progress, and release eligibility assessments.

Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794)

Author of On Crimes and Punishments (1764) who condemned torture and capital punishment while advocating for rational, proportionate, and predictable state punishment.

Benjamin Rush (1746–1813)

Penal reformer who helped establish the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons and influenced early American reform and Eastern State Penitentiary.

John Howard (1726–1790)

Calvinist prison reformer associated with the Penitentiary Act of 1779 who inspected prisons, opposed capital punishment and transportation, and campaigned for hygiene and humane conditions.

Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845)

Quaker reformer known as the 'Angel of Prisons' who campaigned for humane conditions for incarcerated women, paid guards, and sex segregation in penal facilities.

Margery Fry (1874–1958)

Quaker penal reformer affiliated with the Howard League who championed prison education and advocated financial compensation for victims of crime.

Pennsylvania Model

An early American penitentiary system (e.g., Walnut Street Jail in 1789, Eastern State Penitentiary in 1829) emphasizing separate confinement and prisoner isolation to encourage moral reflection.

Mark System

A penal release incentive developed by Alexander Maconochie in Tasmania, under which incarcerated individuals earned marks through work and good conduct to gain early release.

Zebulon Brockway (1827–1920)

Warden of Elmira Reformatory in New York who utilized the mark system, arguing that Christian education, hard work, and incentives could rehabilitate offenders.

Big House Prison Movement

A correctional reform movement linked to wardens Thomas Mott Osborne and Clinton Duffy aiming to reconstruct society inside prison walls through structured life and limited inmate self-governance.

Robert Martinson (1974 Review)

Sociologist who analyzed 231 offender rehabilitation studies (1945–1967) and concluded that programs had little consistent effect on recidivism, giving rise to the 'Nothing Works' doctrine.

Recidivism

The act of returning to criminal behaviour or committing further offences following a prior conviction or criminal justice intervention.

Therapeutic Integrity

A principle from Canadian psychologists Paul Gendreau and Robert Ross asserting that rehabilitation programs must be properly designed, funded, staffed, and executed to produce positive results.

Individual Differences (Rehabilitation)

The concept advanced by the Canadian School that offenders possess distinct risks, personalities, circumstances, and learning needs, requiring tailored interventions rather than uniform programs.

Psychological Coercion (Bottoms)

Anthony Bottoms' critique that rehabilitation forces offenders to superficially alter personal beliefs and personalities to satisfy correctional experts and secure freedom.

Individualization of Crime (Bottoms)

A critique arguing that rehabilitation incorrectly treats crime strictly as an internal individual defect while ignoring systemic social and structural issues like inequality and exclusion.

Moral Agency (Charles Taylor)

The capacity of a self-aware individual to distinguish right from wrong, make meaningful choices, hold personal values, and establish life goals for which they are accountable.

Desistance

The long-term psychological and developmental process of ending criminal behaviour and sustaining a permanent, non-offending lifestyle.

Autobiographies and Self-Concepts (Maruna)

Internal personal narratives emphasized by Shadd Maruna (1999) that an individual constructs about their identity, which must change into a prosocial self-concept for lasting desistance to occur.

Deterrence

The crime-prevention strategy of preventing future unlawful acts through the threat or execution of legal punishment.

General Deterrence

A penal approach where the punishment of an offender is used to set an example and discourage the general public from committing criminal acts.

Specific Deterrence

A penal approach where punishment is directly imposed on a specific offender to discourage that particular individual from reoffending.

Broken Windows Theory

A criminology theory introduced by Wilson and Kelling in 1982 positing that visible signs of disorder and minor neglect signal absent social control, inviting further crime and misconduct.

Certainty vs. Severity (Nagin, 2013)

Daniel Nagin's finding that increasing police visibility and the certainty (risk) of apprehension significantly deters crime, whereas increasing sanction severity shows little evidence of deterrence.