Social Influence, Social Meaning, and Deterrence

Abstract

The standard economic conception of deterrence assumes that individuals obey or break the law depending on the of crime -- that is, the severity of punishment discounted by the probability that it will be imposed. This paper supplements the standard conception by showing that individuals' decisions to commit crimes are also responsive to another factor: the decisions of other individuals to commit them or not. Social psychologists use the term social influence to refer to the pervasive tendency of individuals to conform to the behavior and expectations of others. There is ample evidence that social influence affects the commission of all manner of crime, from theft, to homicide, to tax evasion. Identifying the contribution of social influence to criminality suggests that society should attend not just to law's effect on the price of crime, but also to its social meaning -- that is, its power to shape individuals' perceptions of the conduct and values of other individuals. In some cases, policies that seem to have little effect on the price of crime -- including order-maintenance policing and curfews -- might nonetheless be cost-effective deterrents because of their power to suppress signs that individuals are engaged in or value crime. Likewise, policies that appear to be cost-effective means of raising the price of crime -- such as the substitution of severity of punishment for certainty of conviction -- might in fact undermine deterrence by magnifying the perception that crime is rampant.