The Medical Model of Treatment*

Abstract

The medical model of treatment in correction was first used as an analogy to promote more humane treatment of offenders. Later it gained prominence because crime was considered a symptom of an organic or mental disease, and its acceptance has continued partly because of the prestige of the medical profes sion. This standard of therapeutic treatment, with its emphasis on the one-to-one relationship, is unrealistic for the vast majority of offenders. Moreover, acceptance of an unattainable ideal has retarded the development of alternative experimental models by providing correctional administrators who are primarily inter ested in maintaining the status quo with rationalizations for failures of the existing system. Consequently, little real treatment is done in correction today. What is called "treatment" is usually some type of administrative processing. Until correctional goals are more carefully delineated and until new methods are tried and evaluated, administrators and correctional personnel are in a position to justify anything they do to offenders as "treatment." As long as this situation continues, little progress will be made.