with whom Justice Marshall and Justice Stevens join, dissenting.
Must detainers based on outstanding charges of probation violation be disposed of within the terms of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers when such disposition is requested? Article III of the Agreement permits an inmate to invoke his rights to speedy detainer disposition by making a “request for final disposition of all untried indictments, informations or complaints on the basis of which detainers have been lodged.” *735N. J. Stat. Ann. §2A:159A-3 (West 1971) (hereinafter cited by Article only). No interpretive rule that I am aware of requires that “complaints” cannot subsume charges of probation violation, and no available legislative history indicates an intention to exclude detainers based on such charges from the Agreement. Instead, the drafters plainly intended a comprehensive solution for the problem of detainers, and the Court itself acknowledges that underlying purposes of the Agreement would be “advanced” if probation-violation de-tainers were subject to its strictures. Ante, at 733-734. Article IX of the Agreement directs that “[t]his Agreement shall be liberally construed so as to effectuate its purposes,” and the Council of State Governments, original author of the Agreement some 30 years ago, still agrees.1 Nevertheless, without mention of Article IX, the Court holds that the Agreement does not apply to probation-violation detainers. I respectfully suggest that, in so holding, the Court constructs an artificial “plain language” argument that assumes its conclusion, vitiates the Agreement in significant measure, and reverses the rationale of our other major precedent construing the Agreement, United States v. Mauro, 436 U. S. 340 (1978). Accordingly, I dissent.
i — I
Prior to expiration of his 2-year New Jersey probationary term, respondent Richard Nash was arrested in Pennsylvania. Upon learning of this, his probation department in New Jersey notified the New Jersey Superior Court of Nash’s probable probation violation,2 and the Superior Court *736ordered that “a Bench Warrant be issued as a DETAINER.” Supp. Record 3. This document was then lodged with corrections officials having custody of Nash in Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania officials, the New Jersey officials and courts, and Nash all treated the detainer as subject to the provisions of the Agreement. Upon its receipt, Pennsylvania notified Nash of his rights to dispose of the detainer under the Agreement. Nash then contacted New Jersey officials and requested disposition of the detainer under the Agreement, and the New Jersey officials attempted to comply with the Agreement’s requirements. The New Jersey state courts reviewed Nash’s case as one involving a “complaint” under Article III of the Agreement, see n. 2, supra, and the Federal District Court in New Jersey ruled that New Jersey’s failure to comply with the time limits of the Agreement required dismissal of the New Jersey probation-violation charges. 558 F. Supp. 641, 651 (1983).
II
In Mauro, supra, we stated that when “the purposes of the Agreement and the reasons for its adoption” are implicated, there is simply “no reason to give an unduly restrictive *737meaning” to the Agreement’s terms. 436 U. S., at 361-362; accord, Cuyler v. Adams, 449 U. S. 443, 448-450 (1981) (looking to purposes of the Agreement in light of Article IX’s “liberal construction” rule). It is therefore necessary to review the purposes underlying the Interstate Agreement on Detainers and how they relate to detainers based on charges of probation violation.
Three distinct goals generated the drafting and enactment of the Agreement: (1) definitive resolution of potential terms of incarceration so that prisoners and prison administrators can know with certainty when a prisoner is likely to be released, (2) speedy disposition of detainers to ensure that those filed for frivolous reasons do not linger, and (3) reciprocal ease for signatory States to obtain persons incarcerated in other jurisdictions for disposition of charges of wrongdoing, thereby superseding more cumbersome extradition procedures. See generally Cuyler, supra, at 446-450; Mauro, supra, at 359-364; Council of State Governments, Suggested State Legislation, Program for 1957, pp. 74-79 (1956) (hereinafter CSG Report). Noting that the Agreement was motivated “in part” by the second purpose — speedy disposition of detainers based on possibly unsubstantiated criminal charges — the Court places far too much emphasis on this purpose which is obviously the least relevant to detainers based on charges stemming from conviction for new criminal conduct.3
*738It is unarguable that a major motivating force behind the Agreement was the first listed above: disposition of unresolved detainers so as to produce sentences of determinate length, so that in-prison programming and rehabilitation could freely occur.4 Because in-prison educational, vocational, rehabilitation, and other treatment programs are generally (1) overcrowded and (2) designed for inmates who will *739shortly be released to the public world, prisoners that may be released only to another State’s prisons are put at the end of the line for such programs. In addition, because prisoners facing longer sentences are believed to be greater escape risks, they are often held in stricter custody levels and denied various in-prison benefits (such as recreational and work-release programs and trusty status). In some States prisoners with detainers may even be denied parole that they would otherwise receive, on the theory that a prisoner cannot be “paroled into” another prison.5 Thus any “charges outstanding” against prisoners that might result in additional incarceration create “uncertainties” that “obstruct programs of prisoner treatment and rehabilitation.” Art. I.6 This *740statement in Article I represents the legislative findings of 48 States and Congress. It is, therefore, those legislative bodies, and not merely the prisoner, who “prefer the certainty of a known sentence to the relative uncertainty of a pending probation-violation charge.” Ante, at 734.
Even if a detainer is withdrawn near the end of a prisoner’s term, he will have been denied the benefits of less strict custody and will be released to the streets without the education, job training, or treatment he might otherwise have received. It is therefore undisputed that prisoners with unresolved detainers are embittered not only because those detainers may have little basis in fact, but also because they have a palpably punitive effect on the prisoner’s life while in prison and on his rehabilitative future following release.7
Prosecutors know full well that a detainer can operate to deny prisoners substantial in-prison benefits and programs, as well as delay their eventual release. Thus, as the Court acknowledges, detainers are often filed with “little basis” in order to “‘exact punishment’” impermissibly, and are often “withdrawn shortly before” release of the prisoner after the damage has been done. Ante, at 729-730, n. 6.8 The evident lawlessness of such practices as well as their disruptive effect on rehabilitation motivated adoption of the Agreement, ibid., *741in order, in large part, to end uncertainty regarding release dates. See Council of State Governments, Handbook on Interstate Crime Control 116 (1978 ed.) (the Agreement is designed “to permit the prisoner to secure a greater degree of knowledge of his own future and to make it possible for the prison authorities to provide better plans and programs for his treatment”).
Obviously, a detainer based on a charge of probation violation implicates these rehabilitative concerns of the Agreement to the same extent as do detainers based on outstanding criminal charges. Accord, N. Cohen & J. Gobert, The Law of Probation and Parole § 12.02, p. 566 (1983) (“[T]he policies underlying [the Agreement] apply equally well to prisoners subject to a detainer based on a probation or parole violator warrant”). Both types of detainers may result in terms of additional incarceration, yet both types can also result in no additional time. Just as judges normally are permitted to impose an original sentence of brief or no incarceration, they also have broad discretion when resentencing for probation violations as to any subsequent term of imprisonment.9 *742Thus certainty regarding the “factual issue of guilt” of the charge, ante, at 732, is irrelevant to the uncertainty of the incarceration term. For this reason, the first listed purpose of the Agreement, certainty regarding length of incarceration, is “fully implicated,” Mauro, 436 U. S., at 362, by de-tainers based on charges of probation violation, and “the very problems with which the Agreement is concerned,” ibid., are present.
The result of such analysis in Mauro is instructive. In that case we concluded that the phrase “written request for temporary custody” in Article IV was sufficiently broad to accommodate a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum from the Federal Government to a State, even though such a writ is (as the dissent noted) in effect a command which state officials have no discretion to ignore. Id., at 361-364; see id., at 366 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). We rejected just the sort of semantic formalism practiced by the Court today, which virtually echoes the Mauro dissent.10 A “narrow reading” of the term “request” was inappropriate because nothing in the Agreement’s history required it, and “[a]ny other reading of this section would allow the Government to gain the advantages of lodging a detainer against a prisoner without assuming the responsibilities that the Agreement intended to arise from such an action.” Id., at 364 (footnotes omitted).
Mauro’s rationale does not require that the terms of the Agreement be thrown to the winds whenever an inmate *743comes up with a plausible policy argument for the Agreement’s application — obviously the Agreement cannot be judicially rewritten if its present language cannot accommodate probation-violation detainers. But, as we also noted in Cuyler, 449 U. S., at 449-450, consideration of the “purpose, . . . structure, . . . language, and its legislative history” is necessary before reaching a final interpretation of the Agreement’s terms. Mauro plainly counsels against miserly interpretation of the words when the purposes of the Agreement are implicated, as they undeniably are here.11 These precedents and the Agreement’s purposes must be kept in mind as one turns to the Court’s argument that the Agreement’s “plain language” cannot accommodate detainers based on charges of probation violation.
I — i I — i J-H
Literally applied, the plain language of the Agreement, ante, at 726, 734, would place far more restrictions on the Agreement’s operation than the Court admits. For example, Article III states that a prisoner who makes a final disposition request “shall be brought to trial within 180 days,” and provides that “[i]f trial is not had . . . prior to the return of the prisoner . . . the court shall enter an order dismissing” the *744underlying charges. Obviously, however, neither the Court nor common sense would require that a prisoner returned on a detainer and convicted on a plea of guilty or diverted into a pretrial probation plan could obtain an Article III dismissal because he had had no “trial.”12 The term “trial” is plainly used in the Agreement to represent the broader concept of “final disposition” — indeed, Article III uses the terms interchangeably. See also ante, at 733 (noting interest in obtaining “speedy disposition of outstanding criminal charges”) (emphasis added).
Similarly, the terms “indictment, information or complaint,” strictly construed, would not encompass the varied types of documents used by some signatory States to initiate the criminal process. Virginia, for example, has a practice whereby criminal charges may be lodged with the court by a grand jury without involvement of a prosecutor. Va. Code § 19.2-216 (1983). The resulting document is called a “presentment” and, as petitioners admitted at oral argument, a “presentment” would not fall within their “plain language” interpretation of the Agreement. Tr. of Oral Arg. 10; see Brief for University of Virginia School of Law Post-Conviction Assistance Project as Amicus Curiae 13-14. Yet detainers based on presentments are, for purposes of the Agreement, no different from those based on indictments or informations. The Court therefore properly rejects this “plain language” argument, “interpreting]” the phrase “indictment, information or complaint” to encompass all “documents charging an individual with having committed a criminal offense.” Ante, at 724.
Once the Court recognizes, albeit silently, the propriety of such interpretive efforts, its continued reliance on a strict “plain language” argument cannot persuade. Nash’s argu*745ment is that the Agreement was designed to deal comprehensively with the problems caused by detainers of all kinds, and that “complaint” is a general term used to encompass any type of “charges outstanding against a prisoner,” Art. I, that might form the basis for a detainer. No rule of language precludes such a conclusion. In general usage, “complaint” is defined as, inter alia, any “utterance expressing a grievance.” Webster’s New International Unabridged Dictionary 546 (2d ed. 1957). Even if restricted to its legal usage, “complaint” has been, since at least 1949 when the Federal Rules were amended, a sweeping generic term, applicable in both civil and criminal proceedings and encompassing “every action” that possibly can be filed in federal court, thereby superseding all “technical forms of pleading.” Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 1, 3, and 8(e)(1); Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 3. Nothing in the Agreement or its legislative history indicates that “complaint” was used to exclude any particular type of de-tainer, or that its meaning was intended to be determined by its usage in only one context. Yet the Court looks only to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure for its definition of “complaint.” Ante, at 724. Neither does any rule of statutory construction require the conclusion that “complaint” as used in Article III must be a more specific term than “charges” as used in Article I; indeed, one would think that construing the Agreement as a whole would require that these terms be read as coextensive rather than conflicting. But cf. ante, at 726, n. 4. Ultimately, no more than the fiat of a majority determines that “complaint” cannot include a probation-violation charge.
IV
While I believe that the Court loses the semantic battle in these cases, I am much more seriously troubled by the Court’s blind eye to relevant legislative history and the purposes of the Agreement, and the consequent vitiation of the Agreement itself. Detainers based on outstanding charges of criminal acts likely constitute only between one-half and *746two-thirds of all detainers filed in our Nation’s prisons.13 The drafters of a uniform interstate statute would surely be surprised and disappointed to learn that their efforts had succeeded in dealing with perhaps only one-half of the problem they addressed.14
In fact, all the available evidence suggests that the Agreement was designed to “deal comprehensively” with the problem of detainers of all kinds;15 significantly, the Court can *747point to absolutely no affirmative indication that the drafters of the Agreement intended to exclude probation-violation de-tainers from its terms. As the Court acknowledges, Article I of the Agreement contains a “legislative declaration of purpose,” ante, at 726, to reach “charges outstanding against a person,” that is, “any and all detainers.” The Court concedes the comprehensive scope of Article I, but sidesteps it by declaring that Article III “does not apply to all detainers, but only those based on ‘any untried indictment, information or complaint.’” Ante, at 727 (emphasis added). The italicized phrase, however, merely assumes the conclusion. If the drafters of the Agreement did in fact intend to reach all detainers, as the evidence suggests, nothing in the general language of Article III requires a more restrictive reading.16
*748Although the terms of the Agreement were finally drafted in 1956 by the Council of State Governments, they were founded on a “statement of aims or guiding principles” drawn up in 1948. See CSG Report 74-75.17 Those principles discuss “detainers” generally, without reference to their underlying basis, and the CSG Report declared in 1956 that those principles still “should govern the actions of prosecuting authorities, sentencing judges, prison officials and parole authorities to the end that detainers will not hamper the administration of correction programs and the effective rehabilitation of criminals.” Id., at 75 (emphasis added). Not even a suspicion that a third or more of all detainers might survive unaffected to “hamper” the correctional system is present here. Indeed, Principle III explicitly directs attention to detainers filed by nonprosecuting officials and thus not based on new criminal charges: “Prison and Parole authorities should take prompt action to settle detainers which have been filed by them” Ibid, (emphasis added).
After reprinting these “govern[ing]” principles, the CSG Report went on to introduce three legislative proposals to “dea[l] with disposition of detainers,” id., at 76, including its Agreement on Detainers for application in the “interstate field.” Id., at 78. The CSG offered a statement of purpose for this particular proposal “by which a prisoner may initiate proceedings to clear a detainer placed against him from another jurisdiction,” again without qualification: “The Agreement on Detainers makes the clearing of detainers possible.” Ibid.
To my mind, it requires an impossible effort to imagine that the authors of these broad principles and unqualified *749statements of purpose, repeatedly referring to “parole” and relying on parole experts, somehow intended a less-than-comprehensive answer to the “problems in the detainer field.” Ibid. Rather than attempt that effort, the Court simply ignores all this historical evidence of broad purpose. Presenting a single reference to parole-violation detainers as though it were the only such reference and then dismissing it as merely a “general definition,” ante, at 726-727, the Court quickly retreats to its conclusion-assuming “plain language” argument. Ibid. At no point does the Court attempt to explain what rational intent might have motivated the Agreement’s authors to draft only a partial solution without ever affirmatively so stating.18
*750V
We have recently noted that remedial statutes do not “take on straitjackets upon enactment.” Dowling v. United States, ante, at 228. This should especially be true in the case of interstate compacts entered into by some 50 different legislative Acts and therefore much less amenable to subsequent amendment.19 Much has changed since 1957 in the law of corrections; a probationer is now entitled to an in-person hearing before a term of incarceration is reimposed, Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778 (1973); see Black v. Romano, 471 U. S. 606, 612 (1985), and the rehabilitative ethic that motivated the Agreement has, for better or worse, been largely abandoned.20 Thus timely disposition of probation-violation detainers now requires the expense of transportation for the prisoner to and from the charging jurisdiction,21 while the re*751habilitative benefits previously thought to accrue from such disposition are now discounted. Yet no one argues that an important remedial purpose of the Agreement as written— disposition of any detainer that could result in additional incarceration in order to produce certainty for in-prison programming — is not fully invoked by probation-violation de-tainers. In light of this fact, policy arguments that evidence only dissatisfaction with the Agreement’s underlying purposes or chosen means are illegitimate, nonjudicial bases for decision.
Ultimately, the Court’s decision rests on its conclusion that although the purposes of the Agreement are “advanced” when linked to probation-violation detainers, this is “significantly less” so than when the detainer is based on an outstanding criminal charge. Ante, at 734. Ignoring the bulk of the legislative history as well as the purpose of the Agreement to produce certainty described above, the Court defers instead to claims of “administrative costs” and paternalistic arguments regarding the “desirability of] delay”22 for pris*752oners. Ante, at 733-734.23 Thus Article IX is read out of the Agreement, and the rationale of Mauro is turned on its head. Rather than determining whether the purposes of the Agreement can be achieved within a fair reading of its terms, the Court decides that if the “plain language” of the Agreement is amenable to a narrow reading, advancement of the Agreement’s purposes is insufficient reason to apply its directives. By this backwards reasoning the scope of the Agreement is now restricted to only two-thirds or less of all detainers. Consequently, as would have been the case in Mauro had this Court not properly exercised its authority to construe federal law, prosecutors will once again be able to file certain detainers for little or no reason and “gain the advantages of lodging a detainer against a prisoner without assuming the responsibilities that the Agreement intended.” 436 U. S., at 364 (footnotes omitted).
I respectfully dissent.
“Since the [Agreement] is remedial in character, it should be construed liberally in favor of the prisoner.” Council of State Governments, Handbook on Interstate Crime Control 134 (1978 ed.). See also Cuyler v. Adams, 449 U. S. 433, 449 (1981) (“The remedial purpose of the Agreement supports an interpretation that gives prisoners [a hearing] right”).
This notification took the form of a 1-page untitled memorandum from a probation officer to a Mercer County Superior Court judge, reciting that Nash had been arrested in Pennsylvania and that his “offenses [obviously *736as yet unproven] constitute a Violation of Probation.” Supp. Record 6. The New Jersey Superior Court explicitly characterized this document as a “probation violation complaint.” App. to Pet. for Cert, in No. 84-776, p. 55 (emphasis added). The Court ignores this characterization, as well as the question of what the result would be under its “plain language” analysis if any signatory States routinely so labeled charges of probation violation. I do not believe the argument should turn on such labels. See n. 16, infra.
Probationers in New Jersey are charged with knowledge that commission of further crimes while on probation is an automatic violation under New Jersey law. State v. Zachowski, 53 N. J. Super. 431, 437, 147 A. 2d 584, 588 (1959); cf. N. J. Stat. Ann., § 2C:45-3(a)(2) (West 1982) (warrant may be issued on probable cause that probationer “has committed another offense”). Whether or not the probation-violation complaint and consequent detainer had an adequate basis when issued in this case is not before us.
Although the Court’s conclusion apparently extends to detainers based on any type of probation-violation charge, its discussion refers only to probation violations founded on a new criminal conviction. Of course, probation-violation detainers may easily be based on arrests alone, as was the detainer in this case, or on charges of “technical” violations, the validity of which cannot be so easily presumed. See, e. g., N. J. Stat. Ann., § 2C:45-l(b) (West 1982) (conditions of probation may include “meet-png] . . . family responsibilities,” maintaining employment, continuing medical or psychiatric treatment, “pursupng] a prescribed . . . course of study,” “refrain[ing] from frequenting unlawful or disreputable places or consorting with disreputable persons,” etc.). Nevertheless, I am willing to concede, arguendo, that many probation-violation detainers are based *738upon criminal convictions in another jurisdiction. I will also assume that ‘“uncertainties’” concerning “the factual issue of guilt” are therefore “less severe” with regard to probation-violation than outstanding-criminal-eharge detainers, ante, at 732, although the high rate of conviction for most criminal prosecutions suggests the differences are less real than the Court imagines. Both these assumptions are necessary for the Court to dismiss the second purpose of the Agreement as being “less advanced” in the probation-violation context. Ante, at 734.
The Court also employs its “factual issue of guilt” argument to dismiss the interest in obtaining speedy disposition of detainers so as not to impair a prisoner’s possible defense, which it finds not as “strongly” implicated in the probation-violation context. Ante, at 732-733. Of course, this dismissal also depends on the dual assumptions that all probation-violation charges will be based on criminal convictions, and that they therefore carry greater inherent substantiation. Even if all these assumptions were true, however, the Court’s conclusion still does not take proper account of the other goals of the Agreement.
A detainer is defined by the drafters of the Agreement as any “warrant filed against a person already in custody with the purpose of insuring that he will be available to the authority which has placed the detainer” after his current custody is terminated. CSG Report 74. Because detainers often go unresolved for years, “[t]he prison administrator is thwarted in his efforts toward rehabilitation. The inmate who has a detainer against him is filled with anxiety and apprehension and frequently does not respond to a training program. He often must be kept in close custody, which bars him from treatment such as trustyships, moderations of custody, and opportunity for transfer to farms and work camps. In many jurisdictions he is not eligible for parole; there is little hope for his release after an optimum period of training and treatment .... Instead, he often becomes embittered . . . and the objective of the correctional system is defeated.” Ibid. See Note, The Right to a Speedy Trial and the New Detainer Statutes, 18 Rutgers L. Rev. 828, 832 (1964) (“The thrust of [the Agreement] is not to protect the convict’s right to a speedy trial per se, but rather to protect him from the particular disabilities engendered by an untried detainer pending against him”).
The deleterious effects of detainers are well recognized and recitation of authority is superfluous. A helpful summary may be found in Wexler & Hershey, Criminal Detainers in a Nutshell, 7 Crim. L. Bull. 753 (1971): “As has been carefully documented elsewhere, a prison inmate with a detainer filed against him . . . may suffer several disabilities, ranging from mandatory maximum-security classification to exclusion from vocational rehabilitation programs and even to possible ineligibility for parole.” See also N. Cohen & J. Gobert, The Law of Probation and Parole § 12.01, pp. 562-563 (1983); L. Abramson, Criminal Detainers 29-34, 85-87 (1979); Bennett, “The Last Full Ounce,” 23 Fed. Prob. 20 (June 1959); 9 Fed. Prob. 1 (July-Sept. 1945) (entire issue devoted to “the detainer and its evils”).
The Court seriously misunderstands what “uncertainties” the Agreement is designed to resolve. It is an uncertain length of incarceration, not an uncertain basis for charges, that is “produced” by a detainer and “obstructs” rehabilitation. Cf. ante, at 732 (discussing only uncertainties related to the “factual issue of guilt”). Prison officials generally do not inquire whether the basis for a detainer is certain or flimsy — if it suggests a possibility of additional incarceration, whether for violation of parole or for conviction of a new crime, it is considered as an additional factor in determining the inmate’s security level and programming options. See, e. g., Dept, of Justice, Federal Prison System, Program Statement No. 5100.2, §§ 9(B)(1), 11(A)(1) (1982). The Agreement obviously does not eliminate detainers, but merely provides the means for definitive resolution and imposition of a certain, final sentence. “The result is to permit the prisoner to secure a greater degree of certainty as to his future and to enable the prison authorities to plan more effectively for his rehabilitation and return to society.” S. Rep. No. 91-1356, p. 2 (1970).
“It is in their effect upon the prisoner and our attempts to rehabilitate him that detainers are most corrosive.” Smith v. Hooey, 393 U. S. 374, 379 (1969) (citation and stylistic punctuation omitted).
As Congress noted when it joined the Agreement: “[W]ithdrawal at this late stage is of dubious benefit. The damage to the rehabilitative process has been done because by then the period of treatment and training has ended. Further, this situation precludes the institutional staff from developing a well-planned program upon release.” S. Rep. No. 91-1366, supra, at 5. See also Bennett, The Correctional Administrator Views Detainers, 9 Fed. Prob. 8, 9 (July-Sept. 1945) (“It is . . . pointless to spend funds for the training of an inmate if he is merely to be graduated to another institution”); Heyns, The Detainer in a State Correctional System, 9 Fed. Prob. 13 (July-Sept. 1946) (“[N]o State correctional agency can plan a sound program of rehabilitation for an inmate so long as he must keep answering detainers”).
New Jersey’s laws are typical. Upon finding a probation violation, the court “may impose on the defendant any sentence that might have been imposed originally for the offense for which he was convicted.” N. J. Stat. Ann., §2C:45-3(b) (West 1982). Any sentence imposed may be ordered to run concurrently with or consecutively to any sentence the inmate is serving. §2C:44-5 (West Supp. 1984-1985). Even revocation is not automatic despite a proven violation. § 2C:45-3(a)(4) (court “may” revoke probation upon finding a violation). Similar guidelines apply to parole-violation resentencing. See N. J. Stat. Ann. §§ 30:4-123.60-123.65 (West 1982). See also The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, Corrections, Standard 5.4(5) (1973) (upon revocation of parole for new criminal conviction, resentencing decisions should be governed by the same “criteria and procedures [that] gover[n] initial sentencing decisions”); see generally Cohen & Gobert, The Law of Probation and Parole §15; id., p. 646 (“Most jurisdictions” provide judges with “a vast array of possible sanctions to impose after a revocation”).
In light of such broad grants of discretion, the Court’s assertion, offered with no citation of supportive authority, that “probationer[s] no doubt *742often . . . will be sentenced to serve the full term of [their] suspended sentenced],” ante, at 732, is surprising as well as speculative.
In Mauro, Justice Rehnquist criticized the Court for basing its decision on the purposes of the Agreement, and suggested instead that the Court should have “first tum[ed] to the language of the [Agreement] before resorting to such extra-statutory interpretive aids.” 436 U. S., at 366 (dissenting) (emphasis in original). Cf. ante, at 733-734 (although purposes of the Agreement would be “advanced” by application to probation-violation detainers, in light of the “plain language” of the Agreement “we cannot conclude on the basis of the stated purposes . . . alone” that such a result is required).
“When ‘interpreting a statute, the court will not look merely to a particular clause in which general words may be used, but will take in connection with it the whole statute (or statutes on the same subject) and the objects and policy of the law, as indicated by its various provisions, and give to it such construction as will carry into execution the wall of the Legislature . . . Brown v. Duchesne, 19 How. 183, 194 (1857).” Kokoszka v. Belford, 417 U. S. 642, 650 (1974). See also 2A C. Sands, Sutherland on Statutory Construction § 46.07 (4th ed. 1984) (“The literal interpretation of the words of an act should not prevail if it creates a result contrary to the intention of the legislature”). Even if this were not already a “well-established canon of statutory construction,” Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U. S. 574, 586 (1983), in this ease the law itself directs us to apply its terms “liberally ... so as to effectuate its purposes.” Art. IX.
Thus, just as a probation-violation charge “does not result in the probationer’s being. . . ‘brought to trial,”’ ante, at 725, neither necessarily does an outstanding criminal charge.
The only reported statistical studies report that 46% and 44% of the detainers, respectively, in their coneededly small samples were based on outstanding criminal charges. Dauber, Reforming the Detainer System: A Case Study, 7 Crim. L. Bull. 669, 676 (1971); Heyns, The Detainer in a State Correctional System, 9 Fed. Prob., at 16, n. 1. Detainers based on charges of probation or parole violation, on the other hand, made up, respectively, 19% and 44% of the samples. Ibid. See also Yackle, Taking Stock of Detainer Statutes, 8 Loyola (LA) L. Rev. 88, 89 (1975) (citing unpublished survey claiming that 69% of all detainers filed nationwide were based on outstanding criminal charges). The absence of comprehensive, recent data permits only rough generalizations, but it is certainly safe to say that restriction of the Agreement to only those detainers based on outstanding criminal charges leaves a substantial number of detainers beyond the protection of the Agreement. See Brief for Attorney General of Pennsylvania et al. as Amici Curiae 6, n. 4 (surmising that probation-violation detainers make up a “significant number” of all detainers).
They might also be dismayed to discover that their third purpose — easing the administrative burdens of interstate prisoner transfer for signatory States — also stands partially frustrated by the Court’s decision today. Once authorities have filed a detainer against a prisoner, Article IV of the Agreement enables them to obtain custody of that prisoner from another jurisdiction simply by filing a “written request for temporary custody.” Article IV, however, also uses the phrase “indictment, information or complaint” to trigger its provisions. Thus any State that now desires to resolve probation-violation detainers in a timely manner will no longer have the option of using the Agreement, and will have to resort to the same unsatisfactory extradition procedures that originally motivated the States to draft and join the Agreement.
Yackle, supra, at 94; see also L. Abramson, Criminal Detainers, at 94 (“[Ajrticle I . . . declares that the IAD applies to all situations in which an inmate faces pending charges in another jurisdiction”). The title of the Agreement itself belies the Court’s attribution of a less-than-*747comprehensive legislative intent — we are not construing an Interstate Agreement on “Some” Detainers.
The Court attempts to buttress its position by relying on two examples not presented in these eases. First, the Court recognizes that a comprehensive reading might require application of the Agreement to parole-violation detainers as well. Because Article III refers to “prosecuting officers” and “courts,” and “because prosecutors and judges are generally not involved in parole revocation proceedings,” language other than that currently found in Article III would have been, in the Court’s view, “more appropriate” for this application. Ante, at 727-728. Of course, courts and prosecuting officers from probation departments are involved in probation-revocation proceedings, the only type of proceeding at issue here, so that these terms of Article III are perfectly well fulfilled in this case. More importantly, however, there is simply no reason that the terms of Article III could not accommodate disposition of parole-violation detainers, if they were applied a little less woodenly than the Court reads them. Just as “trial” in Article III must be interpreted as coextensive with the concept of “final disposition,” so the other terms of Article III must be read “liberally,” Art. IX, to accommodate the analogous roles that parole boards and probation officers play in the correctional system. Indeed, the New Jersey probation office, prosecutors, and courts in these cases made no objection to complying with the terms of Article III to dispose of Nash’s probation-violation detainer.
The Court’s second makeweight argument is that Article III “clearly does not apply to a detainer based on an additional sentence already im*748posed against the prisoner.” Ante, at 727, n. 5. Of course it does not, but that is because such a detainer is certain and in no sense undisposed of or “untried.”
Significantly, the 1948 drafters included representatives from the Parole and Probation Compact Administrators Association. CSG Report 74.
Because the Agreement is an interstate compact, its terms cannot be amended unilaterally by one or even several signatory jurisdictions. Thus the Court’s reliance on Congress’ 1970 description of “detainer” to support its conclusion about what the Agreement’s 1957 terms may have meant, ante, at 728-729, is illegitimate; “post-passage remarks of legislators, however, explicit, cannot serve to change . . . legislative intent.” Regional Rail Reorganization Act Cases, 419 U. S. 102, 132 (1974). It is entirely possible that late-joining jurisdictions might have different reasons for signing the Agreement, see, e. g., ante, at 731, n. 9 (Congress joined the Agreement in part to vindicate speedy trial rights), and even varying interpretations of the Agreement’s terms. But such differences can in no way alter the original understanding that generated the particular terms as written. Indeed, New Jersey as well as 24 other States had already joined the Agreement by the time Congress considered the law. Subsequent narrowing of the terms by the remarks of federal legislators is thus particularly inappropriate in this case.
It should also be noted that Congress’ discussion of detainers came in reaction to the decisions in Smith v. Hooey, 393 U. S. 374 (1969), and Dickey v. Florida, 398 U. S. 30 (1970), cases which involved detainers based on criminal charges. See S. Rep. No. 91-1356, at 1. The Council of State Governments provided a much more comprehensive definition when it proposed the Agreement. See n. 4, supra. The Court does not explain why this broad statement is dismissed as merely a “general definition,” ante, at 726-727, while Congress’ later and contextually specific discussion is relied upon to demonstrate intent, ante, at 728-729.
Kentucky has in fact attempted to amend the Agreement to apply explicitly to probation- and parole-violation detainers. Ky. Rev. Stat. §440.455(2) (1985). Kentucky’s amendment expressly notes, however, that it can be “binding only . . . between those party states which specifically execute the same” amendment. § 440.455(1). Since no other State has enacted such an amendment, Kentucky’s law has no effect and, after today’s decision, the will of its legislature stands frustrated.
See, e. g., S. Rep. No. 98-225, p. 38 (1983) (“[T]oday, criminal sentencing is based largely on an outmoded rehabilitation model. . . .Yet almost everyone involved in the criminal justice system now doubts that rehabilitation can be induced reliably in a prison setting”); A. von Hirsch, Doing Justice: The Choice of Punishments xxxvii, 11-18 (1976); Bainbridge, The Return of Retribution, 71 ABA Journal 60 (May 1985). By comparison, in 1959 one of the framers of the Agreement, Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons James V. Bennett, termed detainers “a vestigial remnant of the age-old concept of retributive justice. No purpose is served except the destructive expression of a primitive urge for vengeance.” Bennett, “The Last Full Ounce,” 23 Fed. Prob., at 20.
See, a. g., Padilla v. State, 279 Ark. 100, 104, 648 S. W. 2d 797, 799 (1983) (Smith, J., concurring) (since probation-violation hearing would be “useless,” reading Agreement to require transportation of prisoner from California and back for disposition of probation-violation detainer would be “holding the taxpayers of Arkansas for ransom”).
As the Court acknowledges, a prisoner may well have “a legitimate interest in obtaining prompt disposition of a probation-violation charge.” Ante, at 733. Although delaying disposition of a detainer may in some circumstances be desirable, the Agreement currently leaves the decision of whether to invoke its terms up to the prisoner. Ibid.; see Art. Ill (disposition required only after prisoner “eause[s] to be delivered” a request for final disposition). It is a cruel irony for the Court to note legitimate interests in prompt disposition at the same time it takes the choice away, for under the Court’s result a prisoner will now be unable to dispose of a probation-violation detainer no matter how long it lingers or how frivolous its basis may be, unless the charging jurisdiction wants to do so. See Dauber, 7 Crim. L. Bull., at 680 (statistics indicate that “[pjarole and probation detainers . . . usually remain unresolved the longest”). As Justice Stevens noted in his dissent in Moody v. Daggett, 429 U. S. 78, 94, n. 8 (1976), “if a prisoner would rather face the uncertainty and restrictions which might occur because of an outstanding detainer in hopes that the [federal Parole] Commission would prove more lenient at a later revocation hearing, he could certainly waive his right” to prompt disposition.
Reference to such arguments, as well as to alternative language the Court would find “more appropriate” for the Agreement, ante, at 728, renders the Court’s veiled criticism of the Court of Appeals’ “policy analysis,” ibid., completely ineffective. Indeed, Mauro and Cuyler indicate that such analysis with regard to the policies of the Agreement is entirely appropriate.