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64 Prison J. 1 (1984)

handle is hein.journals/prsjrnl64 and id is 1 raw text is: Editorial For years, many creative students and observers of criminal justice policy have argued that nearly everything we do in the correctional field is based upon unfounded and untested assumptions. We assume that logical procedures will work and become upset when they do not. We assume certain incentives and punishments will control inmate behavior and become angry when this premise does not work. Last year at our Annual Meeting, Alan Henry presented some of the findings of the Pretrial Resources Center concerning the effects of bail and pretrial detention, appearance in court, and new crimes during the pretrial period. One participant in the meeting simply rejected out-of- hand some of the findings. Because they conflicted with his own gut- level logic, he refused to look seriously at the research results. In a recent significant book on the death penalty, a well-known author rests his case in favor of capital punishment on the efficacy of general deterrence even though there is no evidence for it in deterrence studies. Victimization studies by the U.S. Department of Justice indicate that there has been no significant increase in the violent crime rate from 1973 to 1982, but many who read these results refuse to accept the fact and its implications, and continue to cry out that violent crime is increasing in geometric proportions. In fact, someone recently stated to us in all seriousness that the current overcrowding of prisons proves that crime is increasing. The tragedy of all this is that we use these assumptions, born out of stereotypes and so-called common wisdom, as the bases upon which we generate correctional policy and programs. Perhaps nowhere are stereotypes and unfounded assumptions more prevalent than in the subject of women in prison, and this second issue of The Prison Journal on this topic demonstrates that fact in every article. It is equally true in dealing with women offenders and in observing the struggle of women in correctional vocations. Moyer points out the early dual concept of women as either madonnas or whores, and their subservience to men who assume the role of protectors of the madonnas and punishers of the whores. The fallen woman who first violated sexual codes and later criminal codes was beyond hope. But even when reformers pursued rehabilitation, the effort was to restore to madonna status, to purity, to homemaking, to motherhood. Thus, there is little need for vocational training and other educational efforts. This assumption survives to this day with only token efforts to break the stereotype. This also conditions the tendency to treat women offenders like children so as to retrain them in ladylike deportment. Traditional 1

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