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Incapacitation: Penal Confinement and the Restraint of Crime

NCJ Number
154396
Author(s)
F E Zimring; G Hawkins
Date Published
1995
Length
199 pages
Annotation
This book provides a comprehensive survey of the conceptual, methodological, and policy dimensions of incapacitation, the theory that advocates restraining offenders from committing crimes by incarcerating them.
Abstract
The section on conceptual issues provides a history of how the incapacitation of offenders became the dominant official justification for imprisonment in the U.S., summarizes the literature on incapacitation, discusses components of any acceptable theory of incapacitation, and deals with the jurisprudence of incapacitation. The section of the book dealing with research is divided between critical and constructive segments. Offender surveys and official record studies are the most important research strategies for incapacitation studies. This section includes a chapter recounting an analysis of the effects in California of an increase in the prison population on certain crime rates. The final section contains two chapters that deal with the relationship between knowledge about incapacitation and the formulation of penal policy. 1 appendix, 136 references