Your World of Legal Intelligence
 United Kingdom | +44 (0) 20 7284 8080

Improving Sentencing Techniques

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
DOI10.1177/026455056701300203
Date01 June 1967
Published date01 June 1967
Subject MatterArticles
/tmp/tmp-18Z0Mbd0WSIC4T/input
results are very worth while. Already many problems have been brought to the
surface which other methods would have failed to touch. The difficulties of
families visiting their husband or father, the difliculties of managing children, and
the bringing out of complementary strengths from each other-these give oppor-
tunities for personal involvement to members of the community in assisting with
the strengthening and support of families in their time of difficulty.
Thirdly, some members of the general public have offered to go into the
prison and talk to groups of young prisoners. Some have actually taken
prisoners into their homes and accepted them as members of the family. We
are aware of the dangers involved and are approaching this kind of situation
carefully but in a few selected cases results have been excellent.
Members of the International Voluntary Service take parolled young prisoners
into their working parties at weekends and some prisoners have continued
contact after release.
Finally, we have our small but growing body of volunteer &dquo; prisoners’ friends &dquo;.
Even these have been passed on to us through the community groups. A central
church asked interested members to contact suitable workmates etc., and put
on a dinner for over 100 men asking us to talk to them about being associates.
We attracted some. What was so pleasing was that this was set up from the
community.
Thus, we think that the climate of opinion is now ready for us to expand
our use of associates.
This is but the story of a beginning. We don’t claim
long term results. We may achieve very little.
We do know however that
prisoners are seeking our non-monetary aid over a long period after discharge.
We have come to some conclusions. We have seen that the public is ready
to be educated and we see this to be one of our primary duties. Involvement
with the townspeople does not mean begging for money to start a hostel-we
refuse to ask for one penny. We do see it to be our job as the...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT