ABSTRACT
Incapacitation is arguably the dominant penal rationale in post-industrial societies. The premise of incapacitation, that—whatever else it may strive to accomplish or avoid, punishment can serve the purpose of reducing crime—enjoys a stronger position than it has at any time since its emergence as a major rationale for punishment in modern societies at the end of the nineteenth century (Zimring and Hawkins 1995, Garland 2001: 14). The relative decline of its close cousin rehabilitation (or reform) and the broader framework of penal welfarism in which penal sanctions were cast for much of the twentieth century, and the broad demand that governments be seen as doing something serious about serious crime, have left incapacitation the leading penal rationale today.
