Scientific inquiry and offender rehabilitation: the importance of epistemic and prudential values

Abstract

In this paper, we consider some of the ways in which personal and professional values shape the ways in which criminal justice professionals practice. Using the example of offender rehabilitation, we suggest that it is the values that we hold that determine how knowledge about what works is defined and how priorities for professional engagement are set. Specifically, we argue that there has been too great an emphasis on a particular set of epistemic values and insufficient attention paid to the importance of prudential and moral or social cultural values in the way in which rehabilitation services have developed. This has resulted in practices that have largely failed to deliver the types of social benefit that are intended, supported by a policy paradigm that privileges particular approaches. The argument is illustrated with reference to the failure to deliver effective rehabilitation to Indigenous peoples in both Australia and New Zealand.

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