THE CORRECTIONAL ORIENTATION OF PRISON WARDENS: IS THE REHABILITATIVE IDEAL SUPPORTED?*

Over the past two decades, the ideology ostensibly governing correctional policy has been transformed, it is claimed, from liberal-rehabilitative to conservative-punitive. Little empirical in formation is available, however, on whether those who manage correctional institutions—prison wardens—manifest a punitive or reformative orientation to their work Data from a national survey indicate that, while placing a prime emphasis on maintaining custody and institutional order, wardens remain supportive of rehabilitation. Levels of support for treatment, moreover, are only modestly influenced by individual, career, organizational, and contextual variables.     

THE REGULATION OF INTERACTION BY POLICE

Scholars agree that a preoccupation of police is the maintenance of their authority during encounters with civilians. There is little knowledge of how they seek to do this. Using a subset of process data from a large, quantitative, observational field study of police, the authors analyze it from the perspective of general systems theory. They find that authority is maintained in most cases by much more subtle means than past studies have identified.