Deck 5: Incapacitation: Locking up the Wicked

Question 1

In the State of the State address by Arnold Schwarzenegger, which of the following statements did he make regarding mass incarceration?

A) there should be financial increase in prison investment
B) resources invested in mass incarceration have been shown to make communities safer
C) resources should be invested in higher education rather than prisons
D) that mass incarceration was only something that happened in the movies

Answer 1

resources should be invested in higher education rather than prisons

Question 2

The Brown v. Plata U.S. Supreme Court case in 2011 issued a decision that required California to do which of the following?

A) to maintain their prison population
B) to provide individualized treatment to all inmates
C) to build more prisons to hold more inmates
D) to drastically reduce its prison population

Answer 2

to drastically reduce its prison population

Question 3

What was the purpose of the Public Safety Realignment Act?

A) to have more convicted offenders penalized in local counties than transferred to the state system
B) to make sure that offenders are completely safe prior to being returned to the community
C) to invest in more public safety officials to protect the community
D) to provide programs that increase interactions between offenders and community members

Answer 3

to have more convicted offenders penalized in local counties than transferred to the state system

Question 4

Which of the following statements describes the incapacitation effect?

A) the amount of crime prevented by providing treatment to offenders
B) the negative reaction offenders have if they are kept behind bars for too long
C) the amount of crime prevented by keeping offenders behind bars
D) the community member's negative perceptions of offenders increases once offenders are behind bars

Question 5

Regarding incarceration rates in the United States, which of the following is not an observation of the current use of imprisonment?

A) other nations do not use prisons nearly as much as we do
B) the crime rate is extremely low due to the high incarceration rate
C) the United States's incarceration rate is high because we want it that way
D) because the size of the prison population is a choice, Americans could decide to use imprisonment more judiciously

Question 6

The crime trend after 1970 did which of the following?

A) started on a steep downward trajectory
B) remained stable
C) had a sharp decline and then plateaued
D) started on a steep upward trajectory

Question 7

Incapacitation affects offenders by doing which of the following?

A) changes who offenders are
B) puts offenders in a cage
C) makes offenders seek to restore victims to their original state
D) makes offenders worry about getting punished

Question 8

Which of the following statements about collective incapacitation is true?

A) we take everybody in a specific area and put them in prison
B) we take everybody who falls into a certain category and provide treatment
C) we take everybody who falls into a certain category and put them in prison
D) we take everybody in a certain age range who falls into a certain category and put them in prison

Question 9

Which of the following is an example of selective incapacitation?

A) taking all offenders regardless of prior record and putting them in prison for the same amount of time
B) taking all male offenders and putting them in prison for the same amount of time
C) taking repeat youth burglars and putting them in prison for less time than first time youth burglars
D) taking repeat armed robbers and putting them in prison longer than first time armed robbers

Question 10

Which of the following statements is not a problem with prediction instruments when implementing selective incapacitation at the time of sentencing?

A) the instrument would have to out-predict the judge
B) the instrument can only include certain factors or predictors
C) the instrument would have to guide sentencing decisions
D) the instrument is likely to rely on static factors

Question 11

Which of the following statements about self-report surveys to estimate the incapacitation effect is true?

A) the study could come up with different counts of how many crimes people commit depending on what offenses are listed
B) the way in which questions are asked has little impact on the survey
C) since surveys are anonymous people are honest in all of their responses
D) surveys can be given to inmates at any time since they remember all of the crimes they have committed

Question 12

When estimating the incapacitation effect from self-report surveys, which of the following values is not influenced by cases that are outliers?

A) standard deviation
B) median
C) mode
D) mean

Question 13

According to Sweeten and Apel (2007) who examined 262 cases of individuals incarcerated between the ages of 16 and 19, which of the following statements is true?

A) there was a meaningful incapacitation effect for both juveniles and adults
B) juveniles were more likely to recidivate than adults
C) the incapacitation effect was not significantly different from zero for juveniles or adults
D) only adults had a meaningful incapacitation effect

Question 14

Which of the following statements is an example of the aging effect?

A) James was a juvenile delinquent and has remained a criminal today
B) James was always a good kid who never got into trouble but started committing crime as an adult
C) James was always a good kid and never got into much trouble
D) James was a juvenile delinquent but no longer commits crimes

Question 15

Which of the following effects works by filling an offender's place once they are incarcerated?

A) labeling effect
B) replacement effect
C) aging effect
D) incapacitation effect

Question 16

Which of the following is an example of a bottom-up approach?

A) obtaining state-level crime rates
B) collecting information on delinquent behavior through a self-report survey
C) calculating the amount of crime at a university
D) gathering crime rates for a neighborhood

Question 17

Which of the following statements about elasticity is true?

A) the percentage change in the prison population associated with a change in elected officials
B) the percentage change in the crime rate associated with a 1% change in the total population
C) the percentage change in violent offending associated with a change in the total population
D) the percentage change in the crime rate associated with a 1% change in the prison population

Question 18

According to Spelman's estimate based on the most rigorous macro-level studies available, the incapacitation effect:

A) can be large if we decide to have large increases in the size of our prisons
B) is not large even if many offenders are placed in prison
C) is not much different from zero and has little effect on crime rates
D) is strong even with fewer offenders incarcerated

Question 19

Kovandzic and Vieraitis (2006) examined 58 Florida counties from 1980 to 2000 and found:

A) increases in prison population growth were related with decreases in crime rates
B) increases in crime rates were related with increases in prison populations growth
C) increases in prison population growth were not related with decreases in crime rates
D) increases in prison population growth were related with increases in crime rates

Question 20

According to Liedka, Piehl, and Useem (2006), the expansion of prisons:

A) prevented crime in the early years, but their effects have reached a point of diminishing returns
B) have had no effect on crime rates
C) were less effective in the early years, but have prevented more crimes in recent years
D) have increased crime rates with each prison expansion

Question 21

Describe what incapacitation theory is and its underlying assumptions. How does incapacitation propose to reduce crime?

Question 22

Define what collective and selective incapacitation is and how they work to prevent crime. What are the similarities and difference between these two types of incapacitation?

Question 23

What is the incapacitation effect? What are two methodological designs that scholars use to study and measure the incapacitation effect?

Question 24

Describe the three issues when trying to study the incapacitation effect. How do each of the issues propose to affect the amount of crime prevented (or not) that are separate from incapacitation?

Question 25

Briefly describe Spelman's work and provide the definition of elasticity. What were his findings and how do they affect incapacitation theory?