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Crime Rates, Sanction Levels, and Constraints on Prison Population

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Daniel Nagin
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Abstract

In recent years there has been an accumulation of analyses showing a negative association between crime rates and various measures of criminal sanctions, which have been widely interpreted as evidence of the deterrent effect of sanctions (see Tullock, 1974; Tittle, 1973; van den Haag, 1975). In this paper, results are presented that are in conflict with such an interpretation. For the sanction of imprisonment (time served in prison and the risk of imprisonment given commission of a crime), the analysis indicates that the negative association is more readily interpreted as a negative effect of crime rates on sanction levels rather than its reverse—a deterrent effect.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 12 , Issue 3: Special Issue on Criminal Justice , Spring 1978 , pp. 341 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

This study was supported by PHS Research Grant No. 1 ROl MH 2837-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health, Center for Studies of Crime and Delinquency.

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