The Sentence and Treatment of Offenders

In the United States, as in most Western coun tries, the old doctrine is progressively falling into disuse that the purpose of the criminal law is to exact from the criminal a retributive suffering proportionate to the heinousness of the offense. Instead, the effort is being made to combine deter rence and public protection with restoration of the offender to a more self-sustaining role in the community. Probation pro vides the courts a constructive alternative to imprisonment; parole and the indeterminate sentence mitigate the inflexibility of statutory penalties. The current trend in the disposition of offenders is unmistakably toward individualized penal treat ment administered within the framework of a flexible criminal code. While individualization of treatment regarding offend ers is one goal, vast disparities between the laws and the prac tices of the many criminal jurisdictions of the United States make movement toward greater uniformity another desirable goal. Although a guide toward both these goals, the Model Penal Code is not intended to be adopted uniformly by all states; its objective is to examine and make more explicit the problems of criminal law, to bring under discussion alternative solutions, and to express conclusions in clear statutory lan guage. For the findings of the social sciences to be brought adequately to bear upon the treatment and disposition of of fenders, the sympathetic co-operation is required of the judges and the courts and the prisons and correctional institutions.— Ed.