Beyond ‘What Works?’ A 25-year Jubilee Retrospective of Robert Martinsons Famous Article
| Author | Rick Sarre |
| Published date | 01 April 2001 |
| Date | 01 April 2001 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/000486580103400103 |
38
Beyond
'What
Works?'
A25-year Jubilee Retrospective
of
Robert
Martinson's Famous Article
Rick
Sarre
The
story
behind
the
publication of American sociologist
Robert
Martinson's
1974
article
entitled
"What
Works?"
provides
researchers, policy-makers and social science observers with a sobering
reminder
of
the
possibilities of
research
conclusions
assuming an
inappropriate
life
of their own.This paper explores briefly
the
origins of
the
article and its impact at
the
time on corrections
policy.
It discusses
some
of
the
events since 1974, in
both
the
USA and Australia,
that
demonstrate
the
subsequent reification of "Nothing Works". It is
not
designed as contributing
to
the
debate on
the
effectiveness of rehabilita-
tion. Rather
the
story is used an illustration of
the
potential for research
to
fall
victim
to
the
dangers of socially constructed realities.
Robert Martinson in 1974
In the late 1960s in the
USA
a large number of rehabilitation evaluations were
reviewed by the New York sociologist Robert Martinson in the company of two
research colleagues, Dr Doug Lipton and Ms Judith Wilks. His interpretations of
the results were published in a now famous article under his name alone in the
journal The
Public
Interest,
entitled
"What
Works? Questions and Answers About
Prison Reform".
The
1974 article is historically regarded as debunking the idea
that
it is possible to rehabilitate custodial inmates, indeed, to reform prisoners at all.
Many authors have noted
that
it is probably the least frequently read
but
most
frequently quoted and cited article in the rehabilitation literature (e.g., Cousineau
and Plecas, 1982, Gendreau and Ross, 1987).
Martinson is often misquoted.
What
did he
actually
say?
He wrote:
"With few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative effortsthat have been reported
so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism. Studies
that
have been done
since our survey was completed do
not
present any major grounds for altering that
original conclusion". (1974, p. 25)
Address for correspondence: Associate Professor of Law
and
Criminology,
School
of
International Business, University of South Australia,
GPO
Box 2471, Adelaide SA 5001,
Australia. Email:RickSarre@unisa.edu.a
THE
AUSTRALIAN
AND NEW ZEALAND
JOURNAL
OF CRIMINOLOGY
VOLUME
34
NUMBER
I 200I
PP.
38-46
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