ABSTRACT
The conceptual framework views individual criminals as automatons, insensitive to changing incentive structures and programmed to play out predetermined criminal careers subject only to possible interruptions due to incarceration. This chapter presents a conceptual framework and argues that assumptions undergirding incapacitation research represent a rather dubious special case that does not deserve any special standing in making policy prescriptions. In this conceptual framework, observed crime rates are the net result of a dynamic interaction between criminals, the criminal justice system, and the public at large. The chapter reviews the incapacitation model and the policy research findings that have been generated by the application of this model to various sorts of empirical evidence. It provides the results of a simulation study, demonstrating that a selective incapacitation sentencing policy may, under quite reasonable assumptions concerning adaptive behavior, be inferior from a crime-control perspective to a uniform sentencing strategy.
