Estimating the impact of incarceration on subsequent offending trajectories: deterrent, criminogenic, or null effect?

• Author: Bhati, Avinash Singh

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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...