NCJ Number
106413
Date Published
1987
Length
49 pages
Annotation
In presenting concepts useful in assessing alternative sentencing responses to prison overcrowding, this paper considers some punishment properties, images of the offender and punishment alternatives, and rationales for various sentencing choices designed to reduce prison overcrowding.
Abstract
The deprivation of liberty has a central role in contemporary criminal justice systems. The classical aims of punishment are deterrence, prevention, and sanctioning according to crime severity. Prevention involves predicting which offenders are most likely to reoffend. Dimensions of punishment include its intrusiveness, scalability, commensurability, permanence, visibility, and diffusion. Other punishment properties are its social and political impact and the pragmatic dimensions of cost, the tolerable limits of prison crowding, and whether punishment will do more harm than good. Other sentence evaluation issues are the degree of focus on offense and offender characteristics, the offender's age, and the value of monetary penalties. The paper concludes with a discussion of the proper locus for decisions about punishment alternatives. 4 footnotes and 19 references.