ABSTRACT
Punishments may serve multiple purposes, and these may include rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation. This chapter focuses on the punishment goal of incapacitation, which is accomplished when a judge imposes a sentence that limits or completely does away with an offender's physical ability to commit a crime. The ultimate form of incapacitation, because it completely neutralizes an offender, is death. A review of sentencing policy is necessary in order for one to better grasp how an offender may end up serving time behind bars, as well as how changes in sentencing policy have resulted in increases in imprisonment likelihood and length. A United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) report on the consequences of the Sentencing Reform Act (SRA) for the first 15 years after implementation indicated that sentence severity in the federal courts increased after 1990 and the use of probation as a sanction declined.
