There has been a reduction in the rhetoric about the rehabilitation mission of prisons and an increase in concern about operating prisons humanely and constitutionally. A prison sentence represents punishment sanctioned by a legislative body and meted out through the official legal system against persons adjudged responsible for their behavior. Although punishment may be for deterrent or rehabilitative purposes, it specifically means the deprivation of liberty for a fixed period of time. When corrections becomes mired in preaching, exhorting, and clinically treating, it becomes dysfunctional as an agency of justice. Correctional agencies should engage inmates as the law dictates--as responsible, volitional, and aspiring human beings, rather than as patients. Rehabilitation in prisons should not be abandoned, however, but should be available on a strictly voluntary basis. Based on information derived from recent Federal and State prison civil rights cases, many prisons have a long way to go simply to provide an atmosphere where inmates are treated humanely and constitutionally. Until such an atmosphere is created in our prisons, talk about rehabilitation is senseless. Three references are provided.