The idea of selective incapacitation is to make a distinction between offenders with a high and a low propensity to commit crime.
Figure 1. Average rate of theft from car and domestic burglary – pre and post-introduction of the Dutch habitual offender law
Note: Plotted coefficients show the average crime rate relative to the month preceding introduction of the habitual offender law. The bars show the 95% confidence intervals. Based on monthly data for 31 cities during 1998-2007.
A habitual offender law adopted in the Netherlands in 2001 (Vollaard 2012). Only offenders with ten or more offenses on their criminal record faced enhanced prison-terms.
Between 2001 and 2007, 1,400 mostly non-violent, relatively old and invariably drug-addicted offenders were sentenced under the law. They accounted for 5% of the prison population. The law implied sentence enhancements of some 1,000%, typically a two-year rather than a two-month sentence for the affected offender population.
These sentence enhancements resulted in a 25% drop in acquisitive crime – the crimes that the affected offenders committed. The law did not have an impact on violent and sexual crimes, offenses that were rarely committed by the affected offenders.
Making the length of prison sentences more dependent on prior criminal records is a cost-effective crime policy. The Dutch policy affected only 5% of the prison population, but reduced property crime rates by 25% to 40%.
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