Thinking About Crime by James Q. Wilson

Author:James Q. Wilson [Wilson, James Q.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books

“Selective” Versus “Collective” Incapacitation

The initial response to the view of the Shinnars was not only that they exaggerated the number of crimes being committed by active, serious offenders, but that they neglected the great cost of reducing the crime rate by locking up a larger fraction of these offenders or by keeping those already inside locked up for longer periods of time. The argument that the Shinnars had greatly exaggerated individual crime rates was eventually disproved, as we have seen. But the argument about cost remained. Even the Shinnars admitted that if New York State were to follow their recommendations and send every convicted mugger and robber to prison for five years, the state would have to find prison space for an estimated forty to sixty thousand persons convicted of these “safety” crimes.21 But as of 1970, only five years before the Shinnars published their study, New York State was incarcerating only nine thousand persons for having committed a violent crime or burglary and was holding in prison only a little over twelve thousand persons for all felonies combined.22 Thus, to accommodate the Shinnars’ plan, the space available for persons convicted of violent crimes and burglary would have to be increased (at a minimum) four-fold.

Joan Petersilia and Peter Greenwood, both members of the Rand group, also came to the conclusion that reducing crime by a significant amount through longer prison terms would be very costly. They analyzed the arrest records of 625 persons convicted in Denver, Colorado, of serious crimes between 1968 and 1970. Instead of estimating the effect of differing sentencing policies on a large group of offenders whose individual behavior was unknown, they looked at the actual arrest record of each person individually and asked whether a particular sentencing policy (say, a three-year mandatory minimum) would have led to the imprisonment of the offender for his last offense and thereby have prevented the offense from being committed. Knowing this, they could then calculate how many additional persons would have to be sent to prison. Their analysis suggested that incapacitation works, but at a price. If every person convicted of a felony received a five-year prison term, the number of felonies committed would drop by 45 percent but the size of the prison population would increase by 450 percent. If the mandatory five-year term were reserved for repeat offenders, such as convicted felons who had previously been convicted of a felony, then the crime rate would drop by 18 percent and the prison population would increase by 190 percent.23

These conclusions about the cost of achieving large crime reductions through incapacitation were sobering, but one finding was also puzzling. The Petersilia-Greenwood data clearly indicated that reserving the mandatory minimum sentence for repeat offenders would be no more advantageous—in terms of crimes prevented for a given increase in prison population—than if it were imposed on all convicted persons, including first-time offenders. At first blush, this seemed contrary to common sense. If recidivists commit a disproportionately large share of all serious crime,

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