The Corrigible and the Incorrigible

The Corrigible and the Incorrigible explores the surprising history of efforts aimed at rehabilitating convicts in 20th-century Germany, efforts founded not out of an unbridled optimism about the capacity of people to change, but arising from a chronic anxiety about the potential threats posed by others. Since the 1970s, criminal justice systems on both sides of the Atlantic have increasingly emphasized security, surveillance, and atonement, an approach that contrasts with earlier efforts aimed at scientifically understanding, therapeutically correcting, and socially reintegrating convicts. And while a distinction is often drawn between American and European ways of punishment, the contrast reinforces the longstanding impression that modern punishment has played out as a choice between punitive retribution and correctional rehabilitation. Focusing on developments in Nazi, East, and West Germany, The Corrigible and the Incorrigible shows that rehabilitation was considered an extension of, rather than a counterweight to, the hardline emphasis on punishment and security by providing the means to divide those incarcerated into those capable of reform and the irredeemable.

“A magnificent history of the 'correctional imagination'—the ideas and practices associated with the reform and rehabilitation of criminals in modern Germany . . . highly original and elegantly written, it will undoubtedly become the standard work on the subject for many years to come, revising conventional wisdom and advancing provocative new interpretations. The study’s longue durée coverage of Nazi Germany, East Germany and West Germany is rare and provides interesting points of comparisons that will be of interest to historians of all three regimes.”
—Richard Wetzell, German Historical Institute

Photo: Prisoners from the penal camp in Rüdersdorf near Berlin at work in a quarry in 1949. At the time, the facility incarcerated former active Nazi party members.  Photo by Otto Donath, Permission of the German Federal Archive.

Greg Eghigian is Associate Professor of Modern History, Penn State University.