Robert Martinson

Robert Magnus Martinson was an American sociologist and criminologist best known for his 1974 study What Works?, which examined prisoner rehabilitation programs and gave rise to what became known as the nothing works doctrine. He chaired the Sociology Department at City College of New York and founded the Center for Knowledge in Criminal Justice Planning. His interest in penology grew out of his participation in the 1961 Freedom Riders movement, during which he was imprisoned in Mississippi, and he later revised his original pessimistic conclusions after academic criticism, acknowledging that program quality and funding significantly affected rehabilitation outcomes. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/