Crime, Punishment and Personality: An Examination of the Deterrence Question

Abstract

While presumed deterrent effect of punishment provides cornerstone of our criminal justice system, it would be a mistake to assume that deterrence is well established in theory and research. As Gibbs, Ball,2 Puttkammer3 and others have pointed out, despite length and intensity of deterrence controversy, much of debate has been of a moral and ideological nature with few of protagonists providing any systematic evidence in support of their positions. Moreover, Tittle4 concludes that much of evidence cited is inadequate or inappropriate to question at issue. This is a regrettable situation for much of deterrence question is clearly amenable to empirical investigations. Until recent years, most deterrence investigations have focused primarily upon homicide and death penalty. These investigations have led most investigators to accept what Sellin has termed conclusion: the presence of death penalty -in law or practice-does not influence homicide death rates. 5 Not all seem willing to accept this as inevitable conclusion, however. Examination of most capital punishment investigations reveals that they suffer from serious theoretical and methodological limitations. In addition, it is highly questionable to assume, as many criminologists have, that results of death penalty investigations may be generalized to noncapital offenses and other forms of punishment. Recognizing limitations of death penalty research, a few investigators have examined imprisonment as an alternative form of punishment, and offenses other than homicide. Although offenses, time periods and punishment variables differ slightly in these investigations, results suggest (1) a substantial inverse correlation between certainty of imprisonment and state's index offense rate, and (2) a less subst ntial negative correlation (and in some cases a low, positive correlation) between severity of prison sentence and rate variables. 6 While these investigations have contributed greatly to a better understanding of deterrence, they too are not without limitations. First, these studies have typically made use of notoriously inaccurate police and prisoner statistics in constructing punishment and rate indexes. Second, punishment measures used rest upon assumption that actual punishment practices in a jurisdiction provide a reasonably good indicator of residents' perceptions of severity of legal sanctions. Although evidence is meager, this assumption appears highly questionable.7 Likewise, persons may be equally unaware of proportion of offenses that result in arrest and conviction, that is, certainty of punishment.