With regard to policy implications, prison’s incapacitation effects should be considered in relation to alternative interventions for preventing violence. For example, changes in policing practices and laws governing access to firearms in the United States have been implicated in substantial reductions in firearm deaths, as have violence interrupter interventions. Compared with these interventions, imprisonment has higher costs and greater potential for negative collateral consequences. Previous research on the consequences of imprisonment has documented the effects of imprisonment on individual morbidity and mortality, both during imprisonment and after release, and on the secondary effects of imprisonment on children, partners and family members, although not all studies consistently show negative collateral consequences. Our results suggest that imprisoning fewer people for violent offences on the margin between prison and probation would have relatively small effects on violence in the community, and that alternative policies and interventions to prevent violence may show greater benefit at reduced social and economic costs.
A natural experiment study of the effects of imprisonmenton violence in the community, David J. Harding et al., in Nature Human Behaviour
