TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2008//
TI  - Against Prevention? A Response to Harcourt's Against Prediction on Actuarial and Clinical Predictions and the Faults of Incapacitation
JO  - Law and social inquiry
A1  - Sapir, Yoav
SP  - 253
EP  - 264
VL  - 33
IS  - 1
N2  - This article reviews Bernard Harcourt's Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age (2007), in which he criticizes the use of actuarial prediction methods in the contexts of policing and sentencing. I focus on the latter context. I argue that Harcourt has identified an important, and not exclusively American, trend and develops a valid critique of it that should be pushed further. From a theory of punishment perspective, I argue that Harcourt's critique is no less applicable to clinical prediction methods than to the use of actuarial ones. Harcourt's arguments, however, beg a more general explanation of the flaws of incapacitation as a justification for punishment. If we base our objection to the use of prediction methods on such larger grounds, questions arise as to the legitimacy of other practices that are not considered punitive but rather “regulatory” or “preventive.”<p /> 
LA  - 
SN  - 0897-6546
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/
ID  - ref1
ER  -