Careful reading of the literature on the psychology of criminal conduct and of prior reviews of studies of treatment effects suggests that neither criminal sanctioning without provision of rehabilitative service nor servicing without reference to clinical principles of rehabilitation will succeed in reducing recidivism. What works, in our view, is the delivery of appropriate correctional service, and appropriate service reflects three psychological principles: (1) delivery of service to higher risk cases, (2) targeting of criminogenic needs, and (3) use of styles and modes of treatment (e.g., cognitive and behavioral) that are matched with client need and learning styles. These principles were applied to studies of juvenile and adult correctional treatment, which yielded 154 phi coefficients that summarized the magnitude and direction of the impact of treatment on recidivism. The effect of appropriate correctional service (mean phi = .30) was significantly (p <.05) greater than that of unspecified correctional service (.13), and both were more effective than inappropriate service (−.06) and non‐service criminal sanctioning (−.07). Service was effective within juvenile and adult corrections, in studies published before and after 1980, in randomized and nonrandomized designs, and in diversionary, community, and residential programs (albeit, attenuated in residential settings). Clinical sensitivity and a psychologically informed perspective on crime may assist in the renewed service, research, and conceptual efforts that are strongly indicated by our review.

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Lab and Whitehead describe our positive finding regarding appropriate treatment as interesting and worthy of further research along the lines we suggested. Although this is appreciated warmly, overall their comments are not enthusiastically supportive of our approach. For example, they charged that our coding was biased in favor of our hypotheses. Positively, this motivated us to reexamine our analyses, and, as is described in an appendix to this rejoinder, we uncovered a few problems that indeed required clarification and correction. Our conclusion, however, remains favorable to psychologically sound treatment because, as we will show, our empirical findings were unaffected by the introduction of controls for the problems identified by Lab and Whitehead. Overall, their lively and multidirectional critique provides an opportunity to compare our message with their message. Even with the caveats and qualifications in their papers, Lab and Whitehead offer a pessimistic message with little guidance as to where next to turn (other than away from rehabilitation), whereas we try to show how human science research in criminology may illuminate promising avenues for achieving treatment effectiveness. The human science (or psychology) of crime and corrections (Andrews and Wormith, 1989) recognizes and values human diversity (e.g., individual differences in risk, need and responsivity) as well as diversity in social reaction (e.g., a distinction between the penalty and the service and differentiations among services according to level, targets, and mode or style of intervention).Our rejoinder begins with a restatement of the opening argument of our paper because Lab and Whitehead object to our characterization of earlier reviews of the literature. We also restate our fundamental findings because CRIMINOLOGY VOLUME 28 NUMBER 3 1990 419 420 ANDREWS ET AL.Lab and Whitehead introduced a few distractions by paying so much attention to peripheral issues. This is followed by an examination of some of their specific charges of bias, as well as a review of their more rhetorical comments.

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