28 The Economics of Crime For example, if a car thief is always expected to impo

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28 The Economics of Crime For example, if a car thief is always expected to impose more costs on society than the cost of incapacitation, that criminal should be incarcerated for life. The same argument will hold true for a murderer, even though murder is likely to be far more harmful than car theft. On the other hand, suppose a man, in a drunken rage, murders someone. If it can be determined that the man will never get drunk again, and is not likely to murder anyone else, the incapacitation costs may exceed the expected future harm. If there is no deterrent effect to prison sentences, in this case it can be argued that the murderer should not be imprisoned. Notice, however, that I am not arguing that in the real world murderers should go unpunished. What I am suggesting is that if, hypothetically, the sole purpose of prison is to prevent criminals from committing future crimes, to save the resource costs of imprisonment any criminal who is considered unlikely to commit future crimes should not be incapacitated. With respect to the incapacitation effect, prison can be best thought of as a place for criminals who are most likely to commit future crimes. In theory, this suggests that an individual who has yet to commit a crime may need to be incarcerated if an expected future crime is deemed sufficiently harmful. Of course, this would be an extremely difficult policy to implement. To determine who should be incarcerated, it makes sense to identify criminals who have already committed harmful acts Once these criminals are incarcerated, they should be given life sentences until it is determined that they would impose less harm on society than the cost of incapacitation. In a sense, then, the optimal length of a prison sentence would be determined by a prisoner's eligibility for parole As can be seen, if there is no deterrent effect, we can make some fairly extreme predictions about how to set the severity of a prison sentence based on the incapacitation effect. From a social policy perspective, this is why it is important to distinguish between the two effects. To determine if there is a deterrent effect of prison, we must look at the available empirical evidence The deterrent effect of prison Before devoting resources to enforce prison sentences, it would be useful to determine that the sanction of prison actually reduces the crime rate. But any empirical study that finds a connection between increased prison sentences and reduced crime rates may not be telling the complete story. It may be important to determine exactly how that connection is being made. It doesn't take much imagination to draw a link between reduced crime and the incapacitation effect. To the extent that criminals are likely to be multiple offenders (and there is evidence, presented later, to suggest that this is the case), and that incapacitation actually works (that is, prisoners do not sneak out at night to commit crimes), an incarcerated criminal will not be an active criminal outside of prison. Separating out the deterrent effect from the incapacitation effect, however, is a more difficult task. The trick is to find something in the data that allows researchers to specifically isolate the deterrent effect. Fortunately, there have been several empirical studies

Explanation / Answer

From the perspective of costs to society we can say that prisons are not always suitable for incapacitating people for minor crimes or crimes which are less harmful. While they are necessary for incapacitation in case of major crimes to prevent any further harm to society. Prisons are effective in deterring crimes. The extent of prison sentence can be determined by analyzing a prisoner’s eligibility for parole.

Incapacitation effect has ability to reduce crime rates in future though it can vary in nature. Since incapacitation physically removes a prisoner from the society it deters him from committing further crimes. Sentence enhancement laws have a greater ability to act as deterrent to incapacitation effect in short run. Though in long run both the deterrent effect & incapacitation effect reduce crime rates in a society.

Though justice system gives more leniency to juveniles it is found that increased punishment is effective deterrence in reducing crime rates. But it is not recommended that both adults & juveniles be given equal punishment due to some other factors. The quality of prison life also has an effect on crime rates. Since studies suggest that low quality of prison life reduces crime rates in future it is does reduces social goals of prison system.

It is a fact that wealthy individuals have greater ability to lower the probability of conviction as they can hire more expensive & effective legal representation than to individual from poor backgrounds. Therefore more resources should be provided to the poor so that they can represent stronger defense.

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