For years many law enforcement agencies have relied on the assumption that jail time or the death penalty serve as adequate deterrents to crime or criminal activity. However multiple studies confirm that jail time and the death penalty are not effective methods alone for deterring criminals. Because of this it is important that law enforcement agents, government officials and community members work together to uncover effective tools for deterring crime and discouraging criminals from repeating crimes after release.

Jail time and the death penalty do not deter crime. Early Gallup Polls conducted in the 1980s and 1990s show that while roughly two thirds of Americans and law enforcement agents support the death penalty, there is inadequate evidence supporting its use as an effective deterrent to crime (Akers & Radelet, 1996). Many assume that the death penalty is legitimate under the assumption that people who commit a crime should pay on a level similar to that of the crime they commit. However, much of capital punishment support rests on the notion that capital punishment is an effective deterrent for crime (Pierce & Radelet, 1991).

While there is some evidence that sugg

Studies show that within the United States offenders are routinely imprisoned longer than two years, the harshest penalties in the West with 39 percent of prisoners sentenced to ten years or more and with more than 125 for every 100,000 citizens in jail at any one time or another (Tonry, 2000). Crime and appropriate punishment have longed lurked as an important issue within government agencies. Policies and institutions have consistently transformed in an attempt to address the problem of crime and recidivism in the states. However thus far crime has not actually been controlled. More and more people are looking to foreign models for guidance, where the philosophy an "eye for an eye" has often been adopted to deter criminal activity successfully (Tonry, 2000). Unfortunately such tactics are often considered too harsh or too brutal, though in essence the death penalty is somewhat modeled from this idea.

Within the United States roughly five to eight times the number of people per capita are imprisoned than in Western European nations despite similar crime rates; the number of federal and state prisons alone in the U.S. has increased more than 500 percent in the last few decades (Monthly Review, 2001). Many consider the state of prisons in the United States a social crisis of sorts of "the highest magnitude" that needs immediate resolution (Monthly Review, 2001:1). Despite increasingly high incarceration rates little evidence suggests that prisons are actually serving a beneficial purpose, which is to deter crimes among criminals or reduce the rates of recidivism or repeat crimes among offenders (Monthly Review, 2001). That leads us to a discussion on the rapidly increasing rates of crime throughout the nation.

Part II - New Methods of Solving Crime

Traditional criminal justice theory holds that by apprehending, prosecuting and subsequently punishing "lawbreakers" criminal activity will decline and crime will be prevented through "deterrence and incapacitation" (Tonry, 2000: 345). Thus far however these theories have not been affirmed. Deterrence must hinge on the premise that criminals or would be criminals would conclude in any given situation that the cost of conducting a particular crime is at best "prohibitive" (Tonry, 2000: 345). Incarceration does however serve one purpose, and that is at least for the time that inmates are imprisoned to physically restrain an individual from committing further crimes (Tonry, 2000). This does nothing however to incapacitate would be offenders after their release.

Much of the data available suggests that most prisoners are not 'paying' adequately for their crimes even when incarcerated. Roughly 95 percent of first time offenders are released within fie years. Many also turn into repeat offenders, to be locked up again within a short period of time (Kupers & Reynolds, 1999). Still others studies suggest that in 1998 more than 1.8 million people were incarcerated, more than double the number that were jailed the decade previous (Kupers & Reynolds, 1999). Some may even consider prison a better lifestyle than they were accustomed to in the street, with free food, television and other luxuries not afforded those living in the lowest socio-demographic populations (Kupers & Reynolds, 1999).

Crime is on the rise, thus law enforcement agents must discover new ways for deterring criminals. In the past the primary method of deterrence adopted by law enforcement agents was apprehension and punishment. Since the dawn of time law enforcement agents have captured 'criminals' and assigned punishment fitting for their crime. Have these actions truly reduced crime? Studies suggest that traditional methods including incarceration are not effective for reducing crime and if anything may increase the overall crime rate or risk of repeat crime from offenders once released from prison (Tonry, 2000).

Much of the research available on deterrence focuses on behavioral counsel

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