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Article Excerpt
I. INTRODUCTION
There is no doubt that the major crime-reduction strategy since the 1980s has been to increase the use of punishment, especially incapacitation, under the assumption that offenders will be prevented from committing further crimes. (1) Incapacitation strategies seek to reduce crime by interruption, or "taking a slice out of" an individual career. (2) Figure 1 shows the number of individuals under several types of adult correctional supervision between 1980 and 2004. All forms of correctional supervision have been increasing since the 1980s, and especially during the early 1990s when crime rates reached their peak in the United States; by year-end 2004, there were almost seven million individuals under some form of correctional control--2.3% of the U.S. population in 2004. These trends show no signs of waning. As shown in Figure 2, the State of California is projected to add 23,000 new inmates by 2011--totaling 193,000 inmates--a growth being driven largely by increases in new prison admissions and by parolees' new crimes or parole violations. (3)
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Amidst this backdrop, a very basic but important question to be asked is the extent to which incapacitation affects individuals generally, and their subsequent criminal activity specifically. Of course, for incapacitation strategies to be effective, there is a need to identify the sorts of offenders who are expected to commit crimes at very high rates while free and whose crimes would not be committed by someone else in their absence. (4) As depicted in Figure 3, it could produce three distinct outcomes. First, it could lead to an increase in the rate of subsequent criminal activity: a criminogenic effect. Second, it could lead to a decrease in the rate of subsequent criminal activity: a deterrent effect. Third, it could lead to no change in the rate of subsequent criminal activity: a null effect. Identifying and understanding the effects that incapacitation can have on individuals under different contexts is crucial in: (1) assessing theoretical predictions about the role of punishment in criminal careers, and (2) developing strategies that minimize any criminogenic harm and maximize any deterrent benefits that result from it--a key issue in the reentry discussion. (5)
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Unfortunately, while there is much discussion about whether incapacitation reduces crime at the aggregate- and individual-level of analysis, (6) there have been few assessments about whether incapacitation, as a life-interrupting event, deflects individual criminal careers--either upwardly or downwardly. The purpose of this Article is to examine the effects of incarceration on individual offending trajectories. In so doing, it extends this area of research by proposing and implementing an information-theoretic model applied to a large sample of prisoners. The results of such an effort bear on both theoretical and policy matters, to which we now turn.
II. THEORETICAL CONTEXT
The extent to which incapacitation influences criminal careers bears on two strands of criminological theory: that which focuses on the role of punishment (deterrence, labeling, defiance), and that which focuses on the relationship between past and future criminal activity (life-course).
Incapacitation is a specific form of punishment, and understanding the effects of punishment on individual behavior has been a central feature in the study of criminology. (7) At the same time, several classic criminological theories make vastly different predictions about the role of punishment with regard to subsequent behavior. According to the classical perspective, swift, certain, and severe punishment should dissuade future criminal activity by altering sanction threat perceptions. Effectively punished individuals are expected to view the threat of sanctions as more salient and thus be deterred from subsequent criminal activity. The research base regarding the deterrent effect of punishment (typically within the context of a police contact or arrest) on sanction threats and subsequent criminal activity is not conclusive, though tends to suggest that the certainty of punishment exhibits a small but significant deterrent effect. (8)
Contrary to the deterrence perspective, the labeling perspective makes a vastly different prediction. Here, punishment is expected to lead to continued criminal activity because offenders become officially labeled as delinquent or criminal, or they internalize and adopt a criminal label that reinforces a criminal image. (9) This label, and the more general labeling process, serves to sever opportunities to prosocial pathways, leaving the offender with few options, and this is believed to be the case regardless of whether the imposition of the label comes from formal or informal social control agents. (10) Much like the evidence on deterrence, the research base with regard to the effect of punishment on subsequent criminal activity via the labeling perspective is mixed, (11) though some recent research fends evidence for indirect labeling effects. (12)
Even further, the defiance perspective advanced by Sherman outlines a series of conditional hypotheses for the effect of punishment on subsequent criminal activity. (13) In defiance theory, punishment can be effective, ineffective, or conditional, depending upon a number of factors, including the context and manner in which the agent delivers the sanction. Because defiance theory is relatively new and requires the collection of original data, the evidence base regarding defiance predictions on the effect of punishment is both indirect and scant. (14)
In short, key theoretical perspectives outline disparate predictions with regard to the role of punishment in deflecting subsequent criminal activity. It is important to recognize that most research conducted with regard to punishment has focused on the role of police contacts or arrest in influencing subsequent behavior. (15) Very few efforts have examined the specific role of incapacitation on subsequent individual patterns of offending.
In a parallel fashion, one of the most consistently documented criminological facts is the link between prior and future criminal activity. Individuals who were criminal in the past have a strong likelihood of being criminal in the future. Although criminologists do not speak with one voice about the explanation for this persistence in, and more interestingly, the divergence from, criminal activity, (16) the theoretical debate underlying this linkage centers on the causal interpretation attributed to the link between past and future crime. (17)
Some criminologists argue that this link is simply a manifestation of a constant and unchanging criminal propensity. (18) Such stable individual differences in criminal propensity are believed to manifest in and across a variety of domains over the life course. Here, individuals who commit offenses at one point in time are more likely than non-offenders to commit crimes at a later point in time. According to this population heterogeneity perspective, there is heterogeneity within the population in a time-stable characteristic that affects the probability of antisocial behavior early in the life course and at all subsequent points thereafter. (19) Others argue that the link between past and future crime reflects the fact that the act of committing a crime transforms the offender's life circumstances in such a way that it alters the probability that subsequent criminal acts will occur, commonly referred to as state dependence. According to Nagin and Paternoster, this process is one of contagion in which an offender's current activities make their life circumstances worse, accelerating the probability of future crime. (20) Involvement in crime could lead to changes in affiliation with delinquent peers, failure in school, etc. which, in turn, lead to subsequent criminal activity. Even further, other scholars argue for some sort of mixed explanation, which allows for both stable individual differences in criminal propensity and for the fact that criminal behavior can causally alter the risk of future crime. (21)
Thus far, the collective research findings appear to indicate that individual differences in criminal propensity are more important than previously thought and that events and experiences that occur after individual differences in criminal propensity have formed also seem to have important consequences for subsequent criminal activity. (22) In short, evidence for a mixed model of population heterogeneity and state dependence is growing.
The policy relevance of the aforementioned debate is obvious: To the extent that an individual's relative criminal propensity is "fixed," incarceration can and should play only an incapacitative role, with the rate of subsequent criminal activity resuming at the same point as before incapacitation. If, on the other hand, an individual's relative criminal propensity is not "fixed," then incarceration could serve as a deterrent and possible turning point to desistance from crime. Whether incapacitation influences the relationship between past and future crime is an important but under-researched question. On this point, Nagin and Paternoster have noted that additional work is needed with regard to identifying the specific events and experiences that can lead persons into and out of crime. One of these is the extent to which institutionalization in the criminal justice system may lead to a deeper involvement in crime, perhaps by "knifing off" conventional opportunities.
III. EXTANT RESEARCH
The study of incapacitation and its role in altering criminal activity is a central policy question underlying the criminal career framework. (23) Scholars have examined the effect of incapacitation on crime through the lens of both individual criminal careers and aggregate crime rates. (24) Given the purpose of the current study, we briefly highlight four relevant studies with regard to the effects of incapacitation on micro-, or individual-level criminal careers.
Haapanen used data from a sample of California Youth Authority offenders to compare aggregate offense rates in the four-year period before and four-year period after their current sentence. (25) As reproduced in Figure 4, the offense rates showed a drop immediately after release from the current sentence, with some continuing decline after that point. Specifically, the four-year average prior to the current sentence was 3.95 arrests, while the four-year average after the current sentence was 2.00 arrests. (26) None of the arrest rates in the four-year post-sentence periods approaches any of the arrest rates in the four-year pre-sentence periods. (27)
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In a series of companion studies using data from a classic longitudinal study of 500 Boston-area delinquents, Laub and Sampson found that incarceration as a juvenile and as a young adult had a negative effect on later job stability, which was negatively related to continued involvement in crime over the life course (by age thirty-two). (29) In a more recent study using an extension of the Glueck data through age seventy, Laub and Sampson undertook an in-depth quantitative and qualitative study of incarceration experiences and how such experiences influenced criminal activity and other aspects of the men's lives. (30) Two specific themes emerged from their interviews. The first was that most men viewed the criminal justice system as corrupt and disinterested in helping them move away from a life of crime. For example, for "Boston Billy," who had spent about half his life in prisons and jails, institutions were horrible places that toughened people up "to a point that you don't care." (31) For Billy and other persistent offenders, prison was no turning point, as it failed to serve any sort of deterrent effect. Moreover, it may have produced a criminogenic effect, since prisons rarely offered skill training, and offenders instead learned about others' successful involvement in crime. (32) The second theme that emerged was that the effects of incarceration across multiple life domains was variable; that is, incarceration appeared to work for some offenders in deterring them away from continued crime, while it failed to help other offenders. For example, the reform school experience was perceived as a positive turning point for some desisters. As articulated by Bruno, getting sent to the Lyman School for Boys "was positive, it was good," (33) and for three other desisters, Angelo, Leon, and Henry, institutionalization in the Lyman School acted "as a turning point." (34) This rare deterrent effect notwithstanding, the portrait of long-term incarceration among the interviewed men, especially the persistent offenders, was "overwhelmingly negative." (35)
Rosenfeld and his colleagues used recidivism data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Multiple State Data Set to assess the effect of released prisoners on state crime rates, focusing on: (1) the number of released prisoners, (2) differences among them in re-offending risk, and (3) the effects on re-offending of post-release supervision. (36) After removing some cases and states from the analysis due to data problems, they focused on three large categories of crime types (violent, property, and drug crimes) during one- and three-year periods following release. Regarding their first question, ex-prisoners' contribution to crime, they found that ex-prisoners had a small but non-trivial impact on crime rates. With respect to the correlates of recidivism, Rosenfeld et al. found results similar to previous research; prior arrests were associated with recidivism, while age was inversely associated with recidivism (older offenders were less likely to recidivate). Additionally, males were more likely to be re-arrested (for violence) than females, while black ex-prisoners were re-arrested more often than whites for all crime types. In contrast, they found that the number of months served in prison was not associated with incidence of re-arrest. After finding that discretionary parole release was associated with lower recidivism, the authors undertook a supplemental simulation analysis that examined the overall incidence of re-arrest if prisoners were shifted from discretionary parole to unconditional release. This analysis indicated that shifting prisoners from discretionary parole to unconditional release would produce small increases in the percentage of re-arrests. In their final analysis, the authors examined the "net" impact of incarceration on crime rates, and their findings indicated that, when extrapolating admission and release trends, many more persons will be leaving prisons and returning to the community than entering prison over time, and that those persons are predicted to add many thousand more crimes when they are released. In short, there will be a larger number of ex-prisoners returning to the community as they exit from prison, and resources need to be devoted to their successful transition and re-integration. Further, evidence from their analysis also supports the expanded use of discretionary parole supervision in the community.
Nieuwbeerta et al. used data from the Netherlands-based Criminal Career and Life-Course Study to examine the effect of first-time imprisonment at ages twenty-six to twenty-eight on the conviction rates in the three years immediately following the year of the imprisonment. (37) After combining group-based trajectory modeling with propensity score matching in order to achieve balance across different groups of individuals, the authors found that first-time imprisonment led to an increase in criminal activity in the three-year follow-up period, and that this effect was not sensitive to crime type (i.e., the results held for property, violent, and other crimes) or age at first imprisonment (i.e., the results held for imprisonment at ages twenty-one to twenty-three and thirty-one to thirty-three as well). Further, the results revealed that the imprisonment effect was observed for three different offending trajectory groups, and was largest for the comparison of the imprisoned versus the not-convicted at ages twenty-six to twenty-eight, but somewhat smaller (but still significant) for the comparison of the imprisoned versus the convicted but not imprisoned at ages twenty-six to twenty-eight.
The importance of their study is without question, but some limitations should be noted. First, they limited their analysis to persons who had not been imprisoned prior to age twenty-six. Second, their sample experienced very little imprisonment, and among those who were imprisoned, the average term was four months, and 78% were imprisoned for less than six months. Clearly, the Dutch imprisonment experience is not much like that experienced in the United States. Nevertheless, their study is important as it stands as one of the first sets of studies to deal with the vast methodological problems that permeate the incapacitation and crime research area.
In sum, it should be clear that a summary statement regarding the effect of incarceration on subsequent criminal activity at the individual level is far from being realized. Punishment experiences...
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