ABSTRACT
The continuing debate about what is known as the "stability-of-punishment" hypothesis is relevant not only for the study of social control, but also for its policy implications. The hypothesis was generated in a paper I wrote with Jacqueline Cohen in 1973 (Blumstein and Cohen 1973) proposing a theory of the stability of punishment. That was challenged by Berk, Rauma, Messinger, and Cooley (1981) in a paper that analyzed California data on prison admissions, and argued that these data did not confirm the stability-of-punishment hypothesis. Their challenge was based mostly on the technical aspects of the definition of" stability" in a time series and was based on data from Califomia. 1My colleagues and I raised some objections to the challenges raised (Blumstein, Cohen, Moitra, and Nagin 1981) and we thought they were appropriate, but I have no desire here to reopen that discussion.
