ABSTRACT
Most criminologists agree that it is far better to prevent crime in the first place than to allow it to happen and then invoke a criminal justice system response to it. Even so, proponents of crime prevention may disagree about how best to keep crime from occurring (Jensen & Rojek, 1998). For example, some scholars have suggested that long-term incarceration is, in fact, one of the most effective forms of crime prevention (see Sherman, Gottfredson, Mackenzie, Eck, Reuter & Bushway, 1998). Requiring high-rate offenders to serve longer sentences, otherwise known as "selective incapacitation," is referred to as "secondary crime prevention." Such an approach is effective to the extent that it increases our capacity to reduce the likelihood of future offenses by those who already have proven themselves unable to abide by society's laws.
