Incarceration is the detention of a person in prison, typically as punishment for a crime (custodial sentence).
People are most commonly incarcerated upon suspicion or conviction of committing a crime, and different jurisdictions have differing laws governing the function of incarceration within a larger system of justice. Incarceration serves four essential purposes with regard to criminals:
Incarceration rates, when measured by the United Nations, are considered distinct and separate from the imprisonment of political prisoners and others not charged with a specific crime. Historically, the frequency of imprisonment, its duration, and severity have varied considerably. There has also been much debate about the motives for incarceration, its effectiveness and fairness, as well as debate regarding the related questions about the nature and etiology of criminal behavior.
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Wilkenson (2004) notes that overall heterogeneity of a society may provide a meta-explanation for the variance in incarceration rates: There may be a multi-directional causality where close-knit societies are least likely to offend against one another. Knowing ones' neighbors may hence bridge econometric explanations across communities. Or put another way, except perhaps for crimes of passion, people do not offend against people they know well.
Penology and justice studies emphasize description and analysis of antecedents of criminal behavior and outcomes of consequences imposed by criminal justice on the criminal behavior. An example of a modern quantitative study of factors influencing the criminal behavior is the study by Krus and Hoehl (1994).
In the study by Krus and Hoehl, variables that might explain differences in incarceration rates among populations were located by a computer-aided search of the compendium of world rankings, compiled by the Facts on File Corporation and the World Model Group, containing over 50,000 records on more than 200 countries.
They argued that predictor variables explained about 69% of variance in the international incarceration rates. Cited as especially important were unequal distribution of wealth (the explanation perhaps favored by liberals) and family disintegration (the explanation perhaps favored by conservatives). According to Krus and Hoehl, these variables act in concert: the presence of one variable does not always precipitate crime, but the presence of both variables often does precipitate crime.
In many countries, it is common for prisoners to be paroled after serving as little as one third of their sentences.
In 2001 the incarceration rate in China was 111 per 100,000 (sentenced prisoners only).
Denmark also has a low incarceration rate with a total of 3774 inmates in the country.[5] Denmark has 59 people in prison for every 100,000 citizens.[5] 62 violent crimes such as rape, murder, robbery, and aggravated assault were reported. There were 322 Property Crimes reported.
In 2006 the incarceration rate in England and Wales was 139 persons imprisoned per 100,000.
In 2006 the incarceration rate in Norway it is 59 inmates per 100,000.
In 2006 the incarceration rate in Australia was 163 prisoners per 100,000.
The rate imprisonment in New Zealand was 179 per 100,000.
India has one of the lowest incarceration rates with 281,000 prisoners in their jails.[5] This is a rate of just under 25 per 100,000; given a total population, 1,129,866,154.[5] India reported 1,764,630 crimes in 2007.[5] There were 236,313 assaults and 111,296 burglaries.[6]
The United States' incarceration rate is, according to official reports, the highest in the world, at 737 persons imprisoned per 100,000 (as of 2005).[7] A report released in 2008 indicates that in the United States more than 1 in 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison.[8] The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.[9]
In the US, most states strictly limit parole, requiring that at least half of a sentence be served. For certain crimes, there is no parole and the full sentence must be served.
Cruel treatment has long been a feature of incarceration. Taken to extremes, such treatment might be described as torture.
Torture has, for much of history, been seen as a tolerable or even necessary component of imprisonment, whether performed as punishment or as part of interrogation. On October 28, 2010, the head of UK's MI6, Sir John Sawers, has described torture as "illegal and abhorrent".[10]
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