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Definition: Imprisonment from The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences

A type of incarceration reserved for those convicted of the most serious offenses (felonies). A person sentenced to serve more than one year of incarceration is sentenced to a term of imprisonment and will typically serve that term in a state or federal prison (as opposed to a local or county jail).

See also

Felon/Felony, Jail, Prison/Prisoner, Punishment (psychology, sociology)


Incarceration and Recidivism

From Encyclopedia of Criminological Theory
From 1930 to 1972, the United States experienced a relatively stable incarceration rate that hovered between 93 and 137 inmates per 100,000 individuals in the population (Blumstein & Beck, 1999). However, since the early 1970s, the United States has been in an era of mass incarceration, with currently more than 1.6 million Americans serving time in a state or federal prison (West & Sabol, 2009). If one adds to this the more than 785,000 individuals incarcerated in local jails, the number of people currently behind bars is a staggering 2.3 million people with the figure rising each successive year (Minton & Sabol, 2009). This sanction has become so pronounced that since 1972, there has been an unprecedented 600 percent increase in the number of individuals locked up, with more people currently incarcerated than working at both McDonald's and Wal-Mart combined worldwide (Nellis & King, 2009; Pager, 2007). Notably, this massive explosion in the inmate population has been a…
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Full text Article POLITICS OF IMPRISONMENT

From Dictionary of Prisons and Punishment
Crime and punishment are major concerns in any community and are matters that are ongoing subjects of political debate. When then Labour Home Secretary, David Blunkett, told a gathering of journalists in January 2004 that he had felt like celebrating on hearing of the suicide in prison of the…
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Full text Article EFFECTS OF IMPRISONMENT

From Dictionary of Prisons and Punishment
While psychological studies generally have found limited evidence of long-term, harmful effects of imprisonment, and claims about the reformative effects of prison gain ground, there is a burgeoning sociological literature that seeks to remind us of the post-Second World War consensus that prisons…
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Full text Article Life Imprisonment

From Encyclopedia of Capital Punishment in the United States
A defendant convicted of a capital offense does not have to be sentenced to death. The majority of capital punishment jurisdictions provide the alternative sentence of life imprisonment without parole, while a minority of jurisdictions permit the possibility of parole or a term of years. There are…
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Full text Article Incarceration

From World of Criminal Justice, Gale
Russian prisoners in prison cell (Corbis)
Incarceration is the placing of an individual in a jail or prison under authority of law. Incarceration differs from imprisonment in that it is a more specific term. For example, a private party who is not acting under authority of law can imprison a person. The person would be imprisoned by not…
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Sexual offenders are often violent offenders and therefore face enhanced penalties for their crimes, particularly in the United States. The “hard on crime” stance that fueled political campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in significantly increased penalties for violent offenders and fewer…
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Full text Article Incarceration and Families in the United States

From The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies
marginalized families prison vulnerable communities Abstract The impact on the incarceration of approximately 2.2 million individuals in US jails and prisons ripples through families. Most of those in prison are poor, poorly educated, and disproportionately people of color. Most women in prison are…
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Full text Article International Rates of Imprisonment

From The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Although the use of imprisonment as a criminal sanction is a universal practice, rates of imprisonment and size of prison populations vary widely around the world. This entry examines the rate of incarceration and number of prisoners globally and shows that both have continued to increase even…
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Full text Article Imprisonment in the United States

From Encyclopedia of Women and Gender: Sex Similarities and Differences and the Impact of Society on Gender
I. Trends in Imprisonment in the United States: 1600s–2000 II. Increasing Use of Imprisonment: Legislation and Social Policy III. Costs of Incarceration Policies to Taxpayers and the Nation IV. Who Are the People in Prison Today? V. Early Trauma Histories: Pathways to Prison for Women? VI. …
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Full text Article False Imprisonment

From World of Criminal Justice, Gale
Geronimo Pratt, falsely imprisoned, pictured on...
False imprisonment is an intentional and illegal restraint of a person’s freedom of movement by another person. False imprisonment has long been a civil tort, allowing the victim to sue the person for damages associated with the confinement. In some states false imprisonment is also a crime, but it…
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Full text Article DEPRIVATIONS/‘PAINS OF IMPRISONMENT’

From Dictionary of Prisons and Punishment
Sykes (1958) was the first to use the phrase ‘pains of imprisonment’ when he identified five areas in which prisoners experience distress as a result of their confinement: 1) the deprivation of liberty; 2) the deprivation of goods and services; 3) the deprivation of heterosexual relationships; 4) …
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