Incapacitation of the Dangerous Offender

The findings reported by Van Dine, Dinitz, and Conrad (1977) challenge the emerging view that, within limits, the control of violent crime can be achieved by incarcerating a relatively small number of offenders who repeatedly commit crimes of violence. If a large proportion of persons arrested for violent crimes do not have a prior conviction for a violent crime (Van Dine, Dinitz, and Conrad estimate 11 percent), and those few with prior convictions commit violent crimes infrequently (the authors estimate less than two a year), then certain assumptions underlying much of current thinking on ways to reduce crime seem incorrect. Specifically, it is erroneous to suppose that a small pool of repeat offenders account for a large proportion of all violent crime and that sentencing to prison only repeat violent offenders will result in a substantial reduction. This point is credible and in part consistent with other investigations.’ A much more startling discovery, however, is that a sentencing policy which sends to prison for five years not just violent offenders, but all adults convicted for committing any felony will reduce violent crime oy only 4 percent. Five-year prison terms for all offenders represents a substantial change from current practice, and if it were achieved would certainly be accompanied by an enormous increase in the prison population. Currently, very few jurisdictions send all persons convicted to prison; many receive sentences to probation, and those who do go to prison stay an average of only about two years. That a more than doubling of prison sentences would accomplish so little sounds discouraging but is, I think, the result of an extreme assumption which the authors do not indicate they are making. Incapacitation may not be as effective a tool for controlling crime as many now suppose, but neither is it as ineffective as Van Dine, Dinitz, and Conrad estimate. To assess the reduction in violent crime due to five-year prison sentences for all adults convicted of felony offenses, the authors analyze the criminal records