The proposed criticism of the new rehabilitationists is not an attempt to deny that treatment may have a legitimate role in a fair system of sanctions. However, the extent of the role of treatment depends both on how much is known about treatment and what other assumptions one makes and including those about proportionality. Rehabilitation cannot provide the primary basis for determining the sentence, and it cannot be the rationale for supporting less harsh sanctions than now available. The main and explicitly stated reason for scaling down sanctions should be equity and the diminution of suffering. Those who want to revive penal rehabilitationism have failed to address hard questions such as those about the criteria for deciding what constitutes a humane penal system or how a renewed treatment emphasis could realize its intended effects or lead to reasonably just outcomes. 46 footnotes