Plans and Programs
The debate between two bands of professionals in the cor rectional system, the healers and the keepers, serves to perpetuate the failures of the past and to frustrate innovative, effective analysis and reform. Given the present context, reforms inevit ably become tools for further punishment and control. The old questions are irrelevant; the old verities, insufficient. The data collected are inadequate, supplying poor answers to insignificant questions. What is urged here is that new frames of reference, borrowed from the methods of policy analysis, be applied to correctional systems. Professional bias constrains the vision of those now working in the system and forces them to divide into factions; therefore, a new band of analysts, cynical and gen eralist in outlook and background, is required to formulate and clarify the system's assumptions, values, goals, program structures, and evaluation. Otherwise, correction will remain transfixed in its hypnotic obsession with failure and obscurity.