Corrections Collective and Selective Incapacitation

Corrections

COLLECTIVE and SELECTIVE INCAPACITATION

As a theory related to the role of criminal justice, incapacitation which involves placing offenders of the law in prison so that they are unable to commit other crimes against society, can be defined in two different ways. First, collective incapacitation occurs when "all offenders of specific crimes receive the same sentence," an example being first-degree murder wherein all offenders receive a prison sentence of approximately the same length of time. Second, selective incapacitation which involves individualized sentencing "for those offenders that officials believe if they are not incarcerated, they would commit serious offenses at a high rate," an example being a serial killer or an habitual rapist ("Victims of Violence," 2008, Internet).

Collective incapacitation also "seeks to prevent crime by increasing the rate and duration of imprisonment for a broad range of offenders without specific prediction of future criminality," while selective incapacitation "seeks to prevent crime by using certain criteria to identify for restraint a smaller number of offenders" who might commit more crimes in society; it can also be used to "reduce punishment for persons who are predicted to be less likely to commit" other serious crimes against society ("Philosophy of Criminal History," 2008, Internet).

As to the size and/or extent of the so-called incapacitation effect, Dan Seligman of Forbes Magazine points out that both forms of incapacitation have helped tremendously in lowering crime in the United States since the early 1990's when incapacitation began to increase at both state and federal levels. This may account for the fact that in the United States today, the prison population stands at about 2.1 million which is "53% above the 1993 number and roughly triple the 1984 number." Thus, Seligman maintains that the incapacitation effect has undeniably helped to prevent further crime in American society.

As a way of supporting this view, he notes some statistics gathered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation over the past ten years. First of all, the number of people being arrested "is far lower than the number of crimes being committed," an indication that placing repeat and habitual offenders in prison for longer periods of time has decreased the arrest rate. Second, some crime analysts have estimated that keeping repeat and habitual offender in prison has lowered crimes by individuals by as much as fifteen crimes per year which when multiplied with the 1.4 million increase in the prison population since 1984 rounds out to about 21 million less crimes per year in the U.S. ("Lock 'Em Up," 2005, Internet).