From Martinson to meta-analysis

English Research evidence in the form of syntheses of offender treatment evaluation has played a role in perceptions of offender rehabilitation. This article reviews the history of the offender treatment debate in the United States, but the focus is more on the reviews than the ideological and political climate of the day. There is no question that such reviews were influential within the academic community during the fall of rehabilitation in the 1960s-70s and especially during its revival since the late 1980s. Narrative reviews such as Robert Martinson’s landmark paper summarised evaluations of rehabilitation programmes and concluded that there was little evidence of treatment efficacy. By the 1980s, however, the findings from quantitative reviews or meta-analysis overturned widespread pessimism about intervention and led to the conclusion that treatment, on average, does have positive effects even if modest in size

Criminology · Epistemology · Ideology · Intervention (counseling · Meta-analysis · Narrative · Pessimism · Political science · Politics · Psychiatry · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Medicine · Psychology · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending · Schizophrenia research and treatment · Rehabilitation

• The Twelve People Who Saved Rehabilitation

  Open Access•Francis T Cullen•Criminology•2005

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