Prisons, Deterrence, and Incapacitation

Abstract

Modern control theory doubts the effectiveness of criminal sanctions to affect the crime rate substantially. This view is contrasted with the expectations of the criminal career perspective, a leading view on the nature of crime and the role of the criminal justice system in controlling crime by deterrence and incapacitation. The contrast is illustrated with differing expectations about how age is related to crime (including serious offending), the importance of the versatility effect for offending, and evidence about how changes in incarceration levels are expected to be related to crime rates. On all counts, the results of competent contemporary research support the expectations of the general theory of crime over the expectations of criminal career/career criminal traditions. The research on statistical modeling and offender typologies in the criminal careers tradition has not provided consistent or replicated results demonstrating that criminal sanctions effectively incapacitate or deter offending. Control theory is inconsistent with mass incarceration, with the belief that increasing severity of sanctions reduces crime rates either by incapacitation or by deterrence, and notes that crime tends overwhelmingly to decline with age for all offenders beginning in early adulthood.