慢性犯罪者概念及復歸問題之檢視──兼論美國近代社會復歸法案之借鏡

Chronic Offenders, Selective Incapacitation, and Implications of the Modern Reentry Laws in the U.S.A.

犯罪學研究已累積相當豐富之犯罪人集中現象（即：所謂慢性犯罪者現象或80/20法則）實證文獻，刑事司法處遇對策上多以長期監禁策略為因應。然而，長期監禁策略不僅易造成監獄擁擠現象，並且受刑人復歸社會益形困難，引發美國學術界與實務界熱烈地討論，反思長期隔離刑政策的妥適性。本文首先檢視慢性犯罪者之本質概念，發現慢性犯罪者的「概念和政策」具大眾吸引力，但易陷入犯罪原因分類和政策處遇分類之複雜性和困難性、慢性犯罪者精準預測工具仍缺乏、慢性犯罪者之概念效度（conceptual validity）仍未建立且長期監禁犯罪最高點的青少年犯具政策倫理問題。
其次，年齡與犯罪關係之實證資料亦顯示，老化（aging）影響犯罪甚鉅，犯罪隨著年齡增加而逐漸減少（包括慢性犯罪者亦復如此），換言之，所謂「慢性犯罪者」隨著年齡增加而逐漸減少，說明長期監禁之無必要性。
有鑑於上述，本文建議我們應以循證式（evidence-based）科學方法進一步思考慢性犯罪者之概念，並借鏡美國近年各項社會復歸法制改革策略，正視慢性犯罪者社會復歸的各項挑戰，建構更良好的刑事政策。

Theorizing the concentration of offenders has been accumulated ample empirical-evidenced research in criminology, and selective incapacitation is often used as a strategy to solve the problem. Mass long-term incarceration, however, fails to show the effect of crime prevention, yet being resulted in prison crowded and more obstacles to ex-prisoners to re-enter the society. The academia and practice in the United States start to realize the problem and conduct great extensive discussions about the appropriateness of selective incapacitation. This article aims to elaborate the potential setbacks resulting from the essential concept of chronic criminals and its relevant public policies. The concept and policies of chronic criminals are attractive to the public, but it is easy to fall into various traps, such as complexities and difficulties of classifying crime causes and punishments, lack of the accurate prediction measures for chronic offenders, absence of the conceptual validity for chronic offenders, and ethical problems resulted from a long-term imprisonment of juvenile offenders.
Moreover, the empirical studies on the relationship between age and crime have also shown that aging has a pronounced impact on criminal involvement. Crime gradually decreases with age (including chronic offenders). In other words, the number of the so-called chronic offenders gradually decreases as age increases, indicating the unnecessity for selective incapacitation.
Based on the aforementioned, it is suggested that the concept of chronic offenders should be further considered with an evidence-based scientific methods, and the recent American legal reforms of reentry to society are worth reference. Face up to the challenges of social reintegration of chronic offenders in order to establish better criminal justice policies.