Penal Policy and the Lessons of Recent Experience

The models of criminal behavior described in this section all share the assumption that criminal behavior is susceptible to modest changes in environmental and social circumstances. Again, these conceptions stand in contrast to the early incapacitation framework that assumed some significant number of offenders with fixed criminal proclivities.^*
*A number of crime prevention strategies follow from the insight that criminal activity is much like any other human behavior—social, subject to incentives, opportunities and contingencies. These strategies include various forms of policing, such as “focused deterrence” or “pulling-levers policing” [David Kennedy, Deterrence and Crime Prevention: Reconsidering the Prospect of Sanction (2009)]. Further, look to probationer programs such as Project HOPE (Hawaii Opportunity with Probation Enforcement)—a community supervision program that aims to efficiently and effectively allocate scarce resources by setting out clear conditions of probation, closely monitoring compliance, and imposing quick and predictable sanctions for rule violations [Angela Hawken & Mark Kleiman, Managing Drug Involved Probationers with Swift and Certain Sanctions: Evaluating Hawaii’s HOPE (2009)].