Incapacitation

               The idea of incapacitated justice dates back to ancient times. It has been practiced for centuries and will continue to be practiced. Incapacitating was originally introduced to take the person who caused harm to society, out. It still works the same way and is used for the same purposes, just the methods being used have changed. In earlier times, things were a little bit more extreme and the conditions in which prisoners had to live in were almost inhumane. However, the main question of incapacitated justice is whether it prevents crime significantly.

            Not many studies have been done to prove if incapacitating criminals is at effective as it sounds. What has been proven over time is that there is a directs correlation between crime rate and incapacitation. There has been little concrete evidence to prove that incapacitation prevents crime. Crime rates did not necessarily drop drastically, but many argue that it could have been higher if it weren’t for incapacitation. There are many ways that the law can incapacitate us.

            Incapacitating people can come in many different forms. One of them is house arrest. House arrest is when a person is taken out of society by placing them in their homes for a certain amount of time. The offender is unable to leave their home and has some sort of tracking device on them to be able to regulate whether they leave their house or not. Some forms of this are with just ankle monitors, in these cases the offender is allowed to leave their dwelling, but may not be allowed to stray too far for too long. There are still countries that have more barbaric forms of incapacitating their offenders.

            For examples, some of the countries that are still under the Islamic law will use significantly harsher punishments, than the ones that are used here in the United States. Theft is considered a very serious crime in these countries and the people who steal punishment is to have their dominant hand removed. For women, not men, that commit adultery will get stoned to death. These punishments sound very ancient and most would not think that they are still used today. Imprisonment is not as commonly seen in some countries as it is seen in North America.

            In the United States the most common form of incapacitation is imprisonment. That is why most jails and prisons are highly crowded. Being that the United State has more regulations and laws concerning human rights, cause for there to be more incarceration, longer sentencing, and less harmful punishments. Incapacitation needs to be further studied especially if it is one of the more common forms of justice. Many of the numbers and statistics concerning it are, skeptical because it is really hard to measure if whether a person was going to even commit a crime in the first place. There are a lot of things left unsure and unanswered with this type of punishment.

            There is no way to actually tell whether or not someone was going to commit a violent crime. Therefore being able to measure it, is incredibly difficult, and frankly we’re not psychic. Incapacitation only leads to more arrests and incarceration, which most definitely, is not the answer to the United States overcrowding issue in the jails and prisons. Due to the fact that most offenders are spending all this time being incarcerated, they lose any ounce of social skills they had. They get released no longer knowing how to behave in a normal daily life setting. They struggle finding and maintaining a job, they struggle forming and maintaining relationships, and usually find their way back in jail or prison. Few people realize that incarceration only solves the short term problem without confronting the lasting effect of incarceration.

            Incapacitation is a necessary means of punishment, but it is not the only means. People will leave jail or prison and almost immediately fall back into their bad habits and routines. What people need to focus on, is getting people to truly want to stay out by having a good and healthy life. A lot of people in jail or prison will get too used to being in there and somehow always find their way back. People gravitate to what they are comfortable with, and a lot of times prison/jail are these peoples comfort zones.

 http://law.jrank.org/pages/1353/Incapacitation-scholarly-literature-on-incapacitation-measurement-incapacitative-effects.html