Which Public Do You Read?

Abstract

Correctional workers are sensitive to what they understand to be public demand. On a limited number of matters there is one very solid public opinion, sustained by firmly ingrained cultural values. On most issues this is not so, for there is more than one public. The question therefore is, which public do we seek? Different publics take different stands on honesty, prisons, probation, parole, courts. We can't please them all, and we don't want to. Correctional workers must decide to which public they wish to address themselves, hoping to weld together as many as possible into a public that will support a given position. The correctional administrator has an obligation to assert lead ership in forming public opinion, not merely to follow the existing opinion of given publics. He is a disseminator of ideas, but also a formulator, synthesizer, mobilizer. In this, he is scien tific in approach, humble, receptive to contra ideas. He engages the emotions as well as the intellect. He furnishes knowledge, out of which convictions may be formed. Public opinion does not spring into existence of itself. Someone must mobilize it. The correctional worker's professional competence gives him the right and obligation to attempt it.