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Gerry Johnstone, "Towards a Revised Image of Therapeutic Approaches to Crime", Law and Critique, vol. 7, no. 2 [1996], 193-216: Today, therapeutic interventions into the lives of offenders tend to be seen and understood as methods of social control which - although they do nothing to remove the real causes of criminality - render deviants more docile. This essay questions the adequacy of this view, arguing that it is based upon a partial and mistaken image of the nature of therapeutic interventions. Critical criminology and socio-legal studies, in particular, has failed to grasp the true nature of the practice of treatment in penal settings, in at least two ways. First, it has tended to direct its criticisms towards 'hard' medical therapeutic approaches to crime, thereby ignoring and deflecting critical attention away from the 'soft' social therapies which are much more common in practice. Second, even when it does examine sociotherapeutic approaches to crime, it tends to misinterpret their objectives and operational principles. It tends to assume that all therapeutic interventions into the lives of offenders share the same objective: to eliminate or at least control those tendencies which render the person a danger or nuisance to society. This paper argues, however, that in much sociotherapy, the aim is to add something to the offender, namely the social habits and competencies which an individual requires in order to participate in productive and fulfilling social relationships. Mailing Address: Gerry Johnstone, Law School, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, United Kingdom; E-Mail Address: J.G.Johnstone@law.hull.ac.uk

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