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Most deterrence research has investigated how perceptions about sanction threats influence decisions to offend. Far less scholarship has investigated the processes in which sanction threat perceptions are formed and modified. In this study, we advance and test a theoretical framework in which perceptions of the certainty of punishment are a function of the offending experiences and consequences of both the actor and others. Some of the empirical implications of this framework are tested with data from the National Youth Survey. The findings include: (1) Arrests had little effect on perceptions of the certainty of punishment for stealing and attacking; (2) In contrast, offending corresponded with decreases in the perceived certainty of punishment for both offenses; (3) Peer offending produced decreases in the perceived certainty for stealing, but not for attacking; (4) Prior offending experience did not diminish the influence of more immediate offending experience on risk perceptions; and (5) Moral inhibition reduced the effects of offending experience on risk perceptions. The implications are discussed for refining theories of offender decision-making.
Keywords National Youth Survey; deterrence; perception; decision-making
Greg Pogarsky is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany. His research focuses on refining models of offender decision-making by revisiting their assumptions about human nature and by appealing to recent advancements on human decision-making in economics and psychology. KiDeuk Kirn is a doctoral student in the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany. His current research interests include rational choice theories, perceptions in the criminal justice system, and quantitative methodology. Ray Paternoster is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Maryland. His research interests include criminological theory, quantitative methods in criminology, and the death penalty. Correspondence to: Greg Pogarsky, School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, 135 Western Ave., Albany, NY 12222, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Introduction
Many years ago, criminologists began to investigate whether threatened and actual sanctions deterred crime (Andenaes, 1966; Chambliss, 1966; Lemert, 1967; Logan, 1972; Tittle, 1969; Toby, 1964). This led to more specific inquiries, for example, into the relative deterrent effects of the certainty and severity of punishment (Claster, 1967; Gibbs, 1968; Jensen, 1969; Klepper & Nagin, 1989; Paternoster, 1987; Teevan, 1976; Waldo & Chiricos, 1972), and extralegal sources of conformity (Bishop,...