Habitual offender

CRIMINOLOGY
WRITTEN BY:
 John Philip Jenkins
See Article History
Habitual offender, person who frequently has been convicted of criminal
behaviour and is presumed to be a danger to society. In an attempt to protect
society from such criminals, penal systems throughout the world provide for
lengthier terms of imprisonment for them than for first-time offenders. In the
1990s habitual-offender laws became harsher, and in extreme cases some
offenders were detained permanently.
The idea of habitual-offender legislation reflects the basic assumption
of positivist criminology that crime is analogous to disease and should be
treated by comparably flexible measures. According to this view, a person
with persistent tendencies to commit crimes should be quarantined from
society as would someone with a seriously infectious disease. During the first
half of the 20th century, advocates of habitual-offender legislation appealed to
then-popular biological theories of crime to argue that if a person committed
several major crimes, it was reasonable to assume that he was criminal by
nature and needed to be imprisoned indefinitely. In the 1950s, however, the
work of criminologist Marvin Wolfgang and others indicated that only a
relatively small number of criminals become serious multiple offenders and
that these criminals commit the great majority of violent crimes and serious
offenses against property. Some studies suggest that this dangerous hard
core constitutes only about 2 percent of all offenders.
In theory, identifying and incapacitating such offenders early in their criminal
careers should prevent a large number of serious crimes. In practice,
however, it is difficult to devise laws that identify not just habitual offenders but
all those who are likely to commit serious crimes. For example, many
laws stipulate that once an individual has been convicted of three felonies, he
should qualify for habitual-offender status and receive a lengthy prison term.
But in various U.S. states, many nonviolent and less-serious offenses—such
as committing fraud, bouncing checks, and even committing bigamy—are
considered felonious crimes. The incarceration of those who commit such
offenses is, at a minimum, controversial. Another point of controversy is that
the availability of habitual-offender laws may unfairly enhance the powers of
prosecutors, who can entice petty offenders to plead guilty by threatening to
charge them with felonies that would earn them habitual status.
Advertisement
In the 1990s several habitual-offender laws were passed in the United
States and elsewhere in the belief that they would help to reduce violent
crime. In 1994 California enacted a so-called “three strikes and you’re out”
statute, which imposed a life sentence for a third serious felony conviction.
These laws, which remain controversial, contributed to a dramatic increase in
the prison population. Despite such criticisms, nearly half of American states
and the federal government had some form of three-strikes legislation by the
end of the 1990s.