Selective Incapacitation and the Serious Offender

And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one ofthy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. Matthew 5. 30 The great War on Pover,ty of the 1960s focused on the root causes of crime, unemployment, lack of education, and discrimination. It was eventually agreed that the War on Poverty failed as a crime control program, and the focus of policy shifted toward more proximate causes of crime. Infact, it seems safe to say that since the 1960s, the United States has looked primarily to the criminal justice system to solve its crime problem. With the 1990s upon us, what can we say about the success of crime control policies that rely on the criminal justice system? The picture, taken one approach or program at a time, is not good. It is now generally agreed that the criminal justice system fails to rehabilitate offenders, to make them less likely to commit criminal acts as a result of treatment or training; that the system fails to deter potential offenders, to make them less likely to commit criminal acts out of fear of penal sanctions; and that such programs as increased police patrols, reinstatement of the death penalty, and modification of the exclusionary rule are unlikely to have much effect on crime, at least within the limits imposed on them by reasonable assessments of their costs.

Contenu

Foreword.- Acknowledgments.- Biographical Sketch.- List of Tables.- List of Figures.- 1: Introduction.- The Concept of Selective Incapacitation.- The Present Study.- 2: Sample and Methods.- The Sample.- The Data.- The Coding.- The Analyses.- 3: Participation in Adult Crime among Former CYA Wards.- Types and Levels of Participation in Crime.- Types of Crimes as a Proportion of the Total.- Breadth of Involvement.- Patterns of Participation by Age.- 4: Adult Arrest Rates of Former CYA Wards.- Arrest Rates over the Follow-up Period.- Arrest Rates by Age: General Offense Categories.- Arrest Rates by Age: Specific Offenses.- 5: Individual Offense Rates: Methodological Issues.- Split-half Correlations.- Correspondence of Rankings Based on Rates of Arrest.- Predictions of Odd and Even Rates.- Implications of Using Official Offense Measures.- 6: Stability of Individual Arrest Rates.- Correlations of Age-Block Arrest Rates.- Patterns of Arrest Rate Levels.- 7: Pre/Post Comparisons: Prison or Probation.- Trends in Aggregate Arrest Rates.- Stability of Pre/Post Arrest Rates.- 8: Correlates and Predictors of Arrest Rates for.- Incarcerated Offenders.- Stability of the Lifestyle Variables.- Age-Block Correlations.- Pre/Post Correlation.- Prediction of Postrelease Arrest Rates.- 9: Incapacitation Effects of Increased Prison Terms.- Incapacitation Effects for Various Offenders.- Effects of Incapacitation on Crime and Incarceration.- 10: Summary and Discussion.- Policy Implications.- Research Implications.- Implications for Understanding Criminal Careers.- References.- Appendix 1: Sample Sizes in Pre/Post Aggregate Arrest-Rate Calculations by Race and Sample.- Appendix 2: Means, Standard Deviations, and Number of Cases Included in Age-Block Variables: All Cases with Prison or Probation Information.- Appendix 3: Means, Standard Deviations, and Number of Cases Included in Pre/Post Variables: All Cases with Prison or Probation Information.