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26 Crime & Delinquency 1 (1980)

handle is hein.journals/cadq26 and id is 1 raw text is: Can We Cope with Alternatives? Alfred Heijder Proposals for alternatives to prison seldom confront many of the prob- lems that the introduction of alternatives in the criminal justice system entails. This is why such proposals more often than not appear to the practitioner to have a utopian tinge. A major reform, which meets all rea- sonable requirements of a liberal system of criminal justice, would be to shorten all prison sentences considerably. The usefulness of this alter- native deserves careful consideration. For centuries, enforced confinement has been at the core of the assortment of punishments offered by penal law. Compared with the noose and the pillory, the prison is an improvement. Nevertheless, there is pervasive uneasiness about its use. The correctional institution is supposed to be a people-changing agency, yet we doubt whether prison really persuades of- fenders to abandon criminal behavior. We hope that prisons deter people from criminal inclinations, but we are not at all sure whether there is in fact a close link between general prevention, a professed goal of criminal justice, and the prison system. We have built an abundance of theories on reform and rehabilitation models, which strain the cognitive capacities of all but a few in charge of university desks. We have experimented with widely varying regimes, with open institutions, with inmate self-government, and with therapeutic com- munities. But positive effects on recidivism are scarcely visible, and those few changes in reoffending that we do observe are difficult to assess. So, many of us have begun to feel that there is no alternative but to go on with prison sentences. For some years now, deterrence and rehabilitation have not been the unquestioned aims of penal action; instead, there has been a move back to the classic restraint model. For incapacitation is the one visible and in- disputable result of a long prison term. Short prison sentences have seemed to many to have all the disadvantages, and none of the advantages, of long sentences. As a consequence, con- siderable innovative thinking and inventive energy have been spent during the past several decades on devising alternatives for short-term incarceration. While many broad schemes have been brought forward, there have been only a few detailed plans. I find no evidence from international reports that any ALFRED HEIJDER: University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. CRIME & DELINQUENCY, January 1980 1

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