Abstract
Except for the death penalty, imprisonment is the severest sanction available to the United States courts in sentencing convicted criminals. In recent years there has been a substantial increase in the number of offenders confined in prison. The resulting overcrowding has created serious management problems, federal court intervention concerning the conditions of confinement, and strong pressure to build new institutions despite the high costs involved. It is therefore timely to consider two major policy issues: How effective is the use of imprisonment in achieving the goals of criminal justice policy? What do we need to know about imprisonment to increase its utility as an instrument of crime control?
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© 1986 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
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Farrington, D.P., Ohlin, L.E., Wilson, J.Q. (1986). The Effects of Imprisonment. In: Understanding and Controlling Crime. Research in Criminology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4940-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4940-5_7
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-9367-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-4940-5
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