Backfire: When Incarceration Increases Crime

This paper examines various ways in which prison may have inadvertently affected crime rates. The question is important because, even though levels of imprisonment increased fivefold since 1973, crime rates have not dropped proportionately during this period. I argue that the crime-reducing aspects of imprisonment are considerably negated by the crime-enhancing ones. The paper focuses on three crime-enhancing effects of imprisonment. First, replacement of co-offenders may account for the failure of prisons to reduce crime. Replacement also results in an earlier and more sustained recruitment of young people into criminal careers. Second, as more people acquire a grounded knowledge of prison life, the power of prison to deter crime through fear of the unknown is diminished. Extensive reality-based experience of prisons in certain communities exponentially increases the significance of this problem. Finally, social factors known to contribute to criminality such as broken families, inequality, and social disorder increase with high rates of imprisonment, especially in certain communities