The Future of Correctional Rehabilitation

Following Martinson’s "nothing works doctrine," scholars have worked to develop an evidence-based corrections theory and practice to show "what works" to change offenders. Perhaps the most important contribution to this effort was made by Donald Andrews, James Bonta, and Paul Gendreau, who developed the Risk-Need-Responsivity Model (RNR model), which became the dominant theory of correctional treatment. RNR was more recently challenged by Tony Ward, Shadd Maruna, and others, through the "Good Lives Model" (GLM). This text probes the extent to which the models offer compatible approaches, and suggests how to integrate the RNR and GLM approaches to build a new vision for offender treatment