NCJ Number
82635
Journal
Monatsschrift fuer Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform Volume: 63 Issue: 6 Dated: (December 1980) Pages: 366-378
Date Published
1980
Length
13 pages
Annotation
Correctional statistics, particularly data on prison sentences and inmate populations, are valuable indices for the comparative study of criminal justice systems in different countries.
Abstract
Incarceration rates have been used to assess deterrence effectiveness and are currently studied to gauge a country's progress in adopting crime prevention policies and alternatives to institutionalization. United Nations (U.N.) surveys request such data to determine members' compliance with the organization's minimal standards for the treatment of prisoners. Comparative approaches to corrections can study the same system at different historical points, relate sentencing and corrections data to the law of the land, and make comparisons among regions of the same country or internationally. Comparative historical studies all confirm the growth of the therapeutic model of corrections in the 1950's and the 1960's. Recent trends in Scandinavia, the United States, and the Netherlands evidence reemergence of the retributional motive, albeit in combination with various treatment and alternative strategies. Fines are replacing imprisonment as the predominant penalty in West Germany, England, Japan, and Sweden. U.N. statistics for 1974 showed the Netherlands and Sweden with the lowest international incarceration rates (22 and 50 inmates respectively per 100,000 population), but the number of prison sentences of both countries exceeded that of West Germany, where the incarceration rate is a high 82. This illustrates the difficulties inherent in comparing diverse criminal justice systems and the need for using more than one index in such comparisons. Data should be compared at different points of criminal processing and differentiated by offense categories. Sentence severity measures must take into account the frequency of a sanction as well as the actual course of sentence disposition. International statistics on diversion, restitution, probation, parole, and incarceration rates need to be more available. Tabular data and 60 footnotes are given.