Preventing crime through selective incapacitation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Vollaard, Ben
• 署名单位: Tilburg University
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2012.02522.x
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 262-284
• 关键词: impact; MODEL

摘要

Making the length of a prison sentence conditional upon an individual's offence history is shown to be a powerful way of preventing crime. Under a law adopted in the Netherlands in 2001, prolific offenders could be sentenced to a prison term that was approximately 10 times longer than usual. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in application of the law across 31 cities to identify the effect on crime. We find the sentence enhancements to have reduced the rate of theft by 25%. The size of the crime-reducing effect is found to be subject to diminishing returns.