On the Optimum Use of Incarceration for Crime Control

Alfred Blumstein and Daniel Nagin
Additional contact information
Alfred Blumstein: Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Daniel Nagin: Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Operations Research, 1978, vol. 26, issue 3, 381-405

Abstract: In recent years serious attention has been given to the potential of imprisonment to reduce crime by “general deterrence,” which discourages criminal behavior in the general population through the threat of punishment and by “incapacitation,” which involves physically separating criminals from the rest of society. Also of fundamental importance to the use of prison is evidence that suggests that the imprisonment rates (prisoners per capita) in the U.S. fluctuates only within very narrow limits. This apparent constraint suggests the need for an overall framework for reducing crime that best uses the limited resource, man-years of imprisonment. In this paper we develop a model that estimates total crime rate as a function of imprisonment policies, incorporating estimates of deterrent and incapacitative effects. Using imprisonment rate as a constraint, we develop an optimization framework to minimize crime rate and use it to explore implications of alternative incarceration policies. An illustrative example, using data from 1970, is provided.

Date: 1978
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.26.3.381 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:oropre:v:26:y:1978:i:3:p:381-405

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Operations Research from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().