Incapacitation of the Dangerous
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
9-25-2008
Abstract
This chapter examines incapacitation as a distributive principle. It discusses how and why the current system's preventive detention measures are cloaked as criminal justice, and shows the justice problems that arise from this. These justice problems cause unfairness to the individual defendant, but the intentional and regular injustice also undermines the system's moral credibility with the community and thereby undermine its crime-control effectiveness. Such cloaking also produces preventive detention problems. The chapter explores the advantages that might be available if the preventive detention and criminal justice functions were segregated. This would mean barring incapacitation as a distributive principle for the criminal justice system in favor of establishing an open and explicit civil preventive detention system.
Keywords
Distributive Principle, criminal law, criminal justice, preventive detention
Publication Title
Distributive Principles of Criminal Law: Who Should be Punished How Much
Repository Citation
Robinson, Paul, "Incapacitation of the Dangerous" (2008). Book Chapters. 140.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_chapters/140
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195365757.003.0006
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195365757.003.0006