Punishment and Crime

This book summarizes and synthesizes a vast body of research on the effects of legal punishment and criminal behavior. Covering studies conducted between 1967 and 2015, Punishment and Crime evaluates the assertion that legal punishment reduces crime by investigating the impacts, both positive and negative, of legal punishment on criminal behavior, with emphasis on the effects of punitive crime control policies via the mechanisms of deterrence and incapacitation.



Brion Sever and Gary Kleck, author of the renowned Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, present a literature review on legal punishment in the United States that is unparalleled in depth and scope. This text is a must-read for students, researchers, and policymakers concerned with the fields of corrections and crime prevention.

List of Tables. Acknowledgements. Chapter 1 - Introduction. Chapter 2 - Theory: The Mechanisms by Which Legal Punishment Might Reduce Crime. Chapter 3 - Deterrence and the Rational Choice Model of Criminal Behavior - The Case of the Disappearing Theory. Chapter 4 - General Methodological Problems in Punishment Research. Chapter 5 - Individual-Level Research on General Deterrence - The Impact of Perceptions of Legal Risk on Criminal Behavior. Chapter 6 - Individual-Level Research on the Effects of Punishment on the Punished -Special Deterrence. Chapter 7 - Macro-Level Research on the Effect of Punishment Levels. Chapter 8 - The Impact of Capital Punishment on Murder RatesChapter 9 - The Missing Link Between Macro-Level and Individual-Level Effects: The Impact of Macro-level Punishment Levels on Individual Perceptions of Legal Risk. Chapter 10 - Incapacitative Effects of Incarceration and the Impact of Imprisonment Rates. Chapter 11 - Crime-Increasing Effects of Punishment. Chapter 12 - Conclusions. Index.