Incapacitation: Penal Confinement and the Restraint of Crime / Edition 1

by Franklin Zimring, Gordon Hawkins

Overview

The one, sure way that imprisonment prevents crime is by restraining offenders from committing crimes while they are locked up. Called "incapacitation" by experts in criminology, this effect has become the dominant justification for imprisonment in the United States, where well over a million persons are currently in jails and prisons and public figures who want to appear tough on crime periodically urge that we throw away the key. How useful is the modern prison in restraining crime, and at what cost? How much do we really know about incapacitation and its effectiveness?
This book is the first comprehensive assessment of incapacitation. Zimring and Hawkins show the increasing reliance on restraint to justify imprisonment, analyze the existing theories on incapacitation's effects, assess the current empirical research, report a new study, and explore the links between what is known about incapacitation and what it tells us about our criminal justice policy. An insightful evaluation of a pressing policy issue, Incapacitation is a vital contribution to the current debates on our criminal justice system.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195115833
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/03/1997
Series:	Studies in Crime and Public Policy
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.52(d)

About the Author

University of California at Berkeley

Sydney University

Editorial Reviews

"A tremendous contribution to criminology, criminal justice policy, and sentencing jurisprudence...by far the most comprehensive and trenchant analysis of incapacitation yet written. This book does for incapacitation what Zimring and Hawkins' first book did for deterrence."—James B. Jacobs, Director, Center for Research in Crime & Justice, New York University School of Law

"Anyone who wants to get beyond the simplistic rhetoric of the current 'three strikes and you're out' debate, and take a serious look at what has been happening to state sentencing policies, should read this book."—Peter Greenwood, RAND

From the Publisher