The Solution is the Problem:
Rehabilitation Isn’t
Sometimes we have the wrong idea about what to do with certain social
problems. We still think that most people can be changed because we want
to change them. I remember when I was young; I was threatened with the
detention home and the military if I didn’t shape up. Our society has the
idea that removing a person from society and removing all vestiges of
individuality will break them down so then can then be rebuilt.
The concept of rehabilitation appears to gain support during the 1840s with
the Christian Revival Social Gospel Confession of Sins Born Again
movement. Public pronouncements by Lincoln that the South could be
rehabilitated once the war was over added an important political secular
dimension. Here was the largest rebellion in the young nation’s history and
the President was saying that he did not want to punish them, saying
essentially, “forgive them; they know not what they have done.”
By the late 1800s, with the explosive immigration from Eastern and Central
Europe and the concomitant increase in crime and juvenile delinquency,
many reasoned that those who did not behave in a “civilized manner” were
acting that way because they had not been taught properly. With the Social
Work Settlement House movement, the concept of rehabilitation and places
of rehabilitation came into its own. Two of the early manifestations were
the “prison farm” and the “fresh air camps” for juveniles. In these settings,
it was presumed that the proper values, appreciations, and morals could be
learned in a physical work environment that was “natural,” not artificial like
the dirty city, and would engender the right thinking and right attitudes.
These individuals would then return to society and engage in positive fruitful
endeavors.
This new idea appeared to be mildly successful, at least from anecdotal data,
but after the initial experiment, the institutionalized form was no better than
the goals of Europe. The principle difference was that these were away from
