Book Review: The Making of a Criminal
| Published date | 01 December 1969 |
| Date | 01 December 1969 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486586900200412 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
248 AUST. &N.Z. JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY (Dec., 1969): 2, 4
we recorded on tape his three conditions
which must be present in the
enabler-
therapist, case-worker, probation officer
...
perhaps including the teacher, parent or
friend - for another person to grow.
Even though
our
tape is now worn out,
colleagues and students persist in elevating
unconditional positive
regard-acceptance
-at
the expense of emphatic understand-
ing and, more importantly, the necessary
condition of being a "real person". In
this earlier paper different words and
lesser assurance convey Rogers' increasing
conviction
that
the function of profes-
sionalisation of all enabling fields is to
provide safety for the enablers through
increasing
status
and diagnostic on
statistical distance.
*"Types of Mental Health Consultation"
by Gerard Caplan of the Harvard School
of Public Health sketches a small, with
hindsight we will say obvious, step
towards the full utilisation of enabling
resources. Some probation officers, for
example, might already regard themselves
as treating the
milieu
as well as
the
client. But how many statutory or volun-
tary
agency workers will seek to develop
apractice of providing only consultations
for teachers, employers, policemen and
amateur community-based groups who
should continue to have primary responsi-
bility for individual treatment? According
to Caplan, such consultants must be ready
to make explicit choices between client-
centred, programme-centred or consultee-
centred techniques. Without specific
accountability of the enabler-consultant
The reasons for his failures will be as
obscure to him as the reasons for his
success; this is a questionable basis
for professional advance. (p. 433)
*Astrongly ambivalent decision to move
from case-work to research three years
ago coincided, among other things,
with
my discovery of
that
group of inter-
national commentators who met in Milan
in 1955 to mourn "The End of Ideology".
Even though some fundamental problems
have been solved, or solutions
are
well
known, professional groups, like political
parties, cannot afford to scrap their
central myths. These myths bear no
relation to day-to-day practice. Thus
the
Labor
Party
defends nationalisation when
the Conservatives are actually introducing
State planning; police clamour for more
men to fight
"the
crime
war"
when
organised crime is decreasing and the
deployment of policemen to other duties
is pervasive; flighty discussions of elusive
generic social work are most common in
schools competently training case-work
technicians and so on. Daniel Bell, whose
analysis of
the
"End of Ideology",
in
a
book of
that
name, has become a primer
for political scientists, here tackles
"Twelve Modes of Prediction - A Pre-
liminary Sorting of Approaches in the
Social Sciences". Is the function of
prediction, as both
the
Gluecks and
Baroness Wootton would agree, to aid
social control, or is it to widen
the
spheres
of moral choice?
*Relationships and ethics come together
in our social institutions whose
bureaucracies, as we know, do
not
adapt
quickly to the new imperatives of over-
population, pollution or the increasing
obsolescence of labour. Warren Bennis,
the
senior editor, discusses "Changing
Organisations" and the human problems
which confront them. He forecasts a
number of changes as inevitable but "this
should not bar any of us from giving the
inevitable alittle push here and there."
(p. 579) The astute reader will have
guessed
that
Bennis' paper finishes with
de Tocqueville where this review started.
What remains is to select for comment
those papers which say how to push here
and there with least effort and most
effect - for
that
you will have to read
the book and decide
what
changes you
are "ready to imagine" for the institution
of your choice.
Although there is no doubt
that
other
editors would have selected differently, an
action-directed
rather
than
aconceptual
or semantic critique was indicated here.
This reviewer guarantees
that
any reader
starting with paper titles or names of
authors having some congruence with his
background or interests, will spon-
taneously move into unfamiliar ground.
For this reason alone the book should be
widely accessible. The cost, at present,
makes individual acquisition prohibitive
but police court detention, welfare and
training agencies should regard it as a
must for their libraries.
KIM
WYMAN,
Research Fellow in Criminology,
University of Melbourne.
The Making of a Criminal, P. E. Mayo,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969.
147 pp. inc. notes and index.
OVER the last few years it has been
becoming increasingly obvious
that
if
criminology is ever to develop along proper
scientific lines it
must
first cast off the
shackles of its national origins and tackle
the
problems involved on a wide and truly
comparative basis. At present there is a
fairly rapidly increasing amount of infor-
mation in this field as more governments
and academic institutions become aware
of the problems involved and of the
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