Certainty, severity, and their relative deterrent effects: questioning the implications of the role of risk in criminal deterrence policy

In the late 60s, Gary Becker incorporated into his formal model of deterrence theory an explicit statement that the theory´s components—certainty and severity of punishment—are more or less influential than one another depending on an individual´s preference for risk. The certainty of punishment is more influential than the severity of punishment in the decision of whether or not to commit crime if an individual is risk acceptant; if a criminal is risk averse, then the severity of punishment is more important than the certainty of punishment. Many aggregate deterrence studies arrive at estimates that reveal varying effects of the certainty and severity components of deterrence theory, with the certainty of punishment carrying the greater, and many times the only, weight. Leaning on Becker´s extension of deterrence theory, empiricists assume that criminals have a preference for risk. Assertions that arrests and convictions are greater deterrent tools imply important worldly consequences because they indicate to governmental authorities where resources should be invested to insure the best deterrent payoff. In this paper, I question both the need to take risk into consideration in aggregate level deterrence studies and the empirical evidence that has been offered in support of attaching greater weight to the certainty of punishment. I show, first, that deterrence theory, from an applied policy standpoint, is encumbered through the explicit consideration of risk preferences. Next, I work through the algebra of the statistical formulations of deterrence models and demonstrate that the greater weight associated with certainty could well be an artifact of the model specification. Finally, I reanalyze data that appear to be consistent with the greater weight for certainty than severity argument and show that the evidence does not support that inference. Potential criminals mentally combine the three deterrence components—regardless of whether they are risk neutral, averse, or acceptant. I conclude by considering what it means to a worldly application of criminal deterrence theory to place equal weight on the certainty and the severity of punishment

Políticas criminais dos últimos 25 anos e o desequilíbrio do sistema de justiça em Portugal

“Crise da justiça” é uma expressão muito comum hoje em dia. É tão vulgar como a própria palavra de “justiça”. Andamos de mão em mão. A situação calamitosa do funcionamento do sistema de justiça, que se encontra repetidamente na agenda política de governo após governo, independentemente do partido no poder e que tanto se lamenta é um produto das políticas criminais portuguesas, ou melhor da não implementação destas. O objectivo deste ensaio é um de traçar o quadro de algumas das grandes políticas criminais destes últimos 25 anos e discutir como elas têm contribuído para uma situação de ruptura do sistema de justiça e, consequentemente, para o insucesso da estratégia governamental dissuasiva do crime. Quer-se saber o que tem sido feito em matéria de desincentivo ao crime e porque é que não se vêm resultados

Testing the ISRD -2 Questionnaire in Portugal

Comunicação apresentada na "5th Annual conference of the European Society of Criminology", Cracóvia, Polónia, 31Aug. - 3 Set. 2005.The pilot study of the ISRD-2 was conducted in a rural secondary grade school in the town of Briteiros in the Municipality of Guimarães, District of Braga. Two classes (one 7th grade and one 9th grade) were surveyed. Fifty was the expected number of respondents; however, only 40 students were present on the day the survey was administered, June 7th 2005. The objective was to test the current version of the ISRD-2 questionnaire in order to discover possible problems, such as omitted or incomplete options, errors in the wording, sequence, and organization of the questions, and the lack of clarity. The survey took on average about 25 minutes to answe

Learning to lose : election outcomes, democratic

Do democratic elections and experience with democracy affect citizens’ propensity to engage in political protest? If so, how?We develop amodel of protest potential based on the incentives election winners and losers face in new and established democratic systems. Using surveys conducted by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) in seventeen democracies around the globe, we compare the effect of being in the political minority or majority after an election on political protest potential. We find that being in the political minority heightens citizens’ political protest potential. Moreover, we find that the effect of losing on protest potential is significantly greater in new democracies relative to established ones. These findings provide systematic evidence that election outcomes should be considered important indicators of political protest potential, and they imply that this effect is particularly salient in countries whose democratic institutions are relatively new and potentially more unstable

Personal economic hardship, happiness, and political satisfaction : a cross-national analysis

On the basis of cross-national survey data collected in 12 European democracies, we argue and demonstrate empirically that people who have experienced economic hardship are less satisfied with their lives and the performance of the political system. Moreover, we show that different kinds of economic hardship (financial and job-related difficulties) have separable effects on people's levels of happiness and political satisfaction. Finally, we hypothesize and show that economic distress that is personally experienced has a greater impact on life satisfaction than on satisfaction with the political system. Conversely, evaluations of the national economy affect political satisfaction more strongly than attitudes about one's life.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT

Putting severity of punishment back in the deterrence package

Studies of criminal deterrence usually show an effect of certainty of punishment but often fail to find an effect of severity. This is a serious threat to the theoretical underpinnings of deterrence theory. Through both a survey of 39 analyses in 33 published studies and our own reanalysis of an often-used data set, we show the problem rests not with the theory but with the analysis of the theory. Finding no severity effect can be traced to â unbundling the theoretical packageâ when moving from the theory to the statistical models used to represent the theory