TY  - BOOK
AU  - Owens,Emily G.
TI  - More Time, Less Crime?: estimating the Incapacitative Effect of Sentence Enhancements
SN  - 00222186
AV  - HB73 JOU 
PY  - 2009///
CY  - Chicago
PB  - University of Chicago Press
KW  - Arrest rates
KW  - Criminal offenses
KW  - Criminal punishment
KW  - Criminal sentencing
KW  - Criminals
KW  - Length of sentence
KW  - Prisoners
KW  - Prisons
KW  - Sentenced offenders
N2  - Sentence enhancements may reduce crime both by deterring potential criminals and by incapacitating previous offenders, removing these possible recidivists from society for longer periods. I estimate the incapacitative effect of longer sentences by exploiting a 2001 change in Maryland's sentencing guidelines that reduced the sentences of 23‐, 24‐, and 25‐year‐olds with juvenile delinquent records by a mean of 222 days. I find that, during this sentence disenhancement, offenders were, on average, arrested for 2.8 criminal acts and were involved in 1.4-1.6 serious crimes per person during the period when they would have otherwise been incarcerated. Although my findings are significantly lower than previous estimates of incapacitation, I find that, on the margin, the social benefit of the crimes averted by incapacitation is slightly higher than the marginal cost to the state of imposing a 1‐year sentence enhancement
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1086/593141
ER  -