NCJ Number
93158
Editor(s)
K R Feinberg
Date Published
1983
Length
123 pages
Annotation
Papers by a diverse group of criminal justice experts focus on selective incapacitation, criminality prediction, violent juvenile offenders, and ways that police, courts, and corrections can help reduce violent crime.
Abstract
The first paper reviews research on crime deterrence and criminality predictors, suggesting that prisons be reserved for career criminals and marginal offenders be diverted into less secure and less expensive forms of confinement. The next presentation compares two cohort studies of juveniles from Philadelphia, demonstrating that the cohort born in 1958 committed more crimes and much more serious crimes than the cohort born in 1945. A critical examination of police crime control strategies proposes that prevention efforts concentrate on crimes resulting from violent relationships among individuals, locations with a high potential for violence, and injuries caused by firearms and drunken drivers. A prosecutor identifies prison construction and specialized programs for habitual offenders as areas critical to crime control, while another author outlines innovative reforms for the correctional system that restrict prison sentences to serious and violent offenders and prison terms to 5 years. A review of Federal responses to State and local crime problems recommends a new partnership among Federal, State, and local governments. This involves Federal assistance in research and data collection, new crime control programs, and emergency situations. Another paper maintains that drug use, as verified by urinalysis, can be used to identify dangerous offenders. Finally, results from a Vera Institute survey of Brooklyn youth reveal the important role that job opportunities play as an inducement for adolescents in high-risk neighborhoods to abandon street crime as they become older. Footnotes accompany individual papers.