Criminal Deterrence Research Articles

Terrorism, insurgency economy, and human security in Borno state, Nigeria

Terrorism is designed is to create sense of public insecurity, showcase State’s inability to arrest violence, and it is severally oiled by an insurgency economy that benefits all stakeholders except the masses as seen in Borno State in the northeast of Nigeria. Terrorism could be seen jeopardizing human security extensively and pushing children outside the literacy nets, into vulnerability of recruitment and radicalization and same goes for the farming communities whose produce are extensively endangered by terror cell groups’ heinous campaign in Borno State. It was against this background that this study engaged criminal deterrence theory to examine terrorism and its implication for security of Borno State. This study decompose insecurity into food security and education security. This study employs exploratory research design with reliance on publicly available archive documents. The study relies solely on secondary data. The research is conducted by examining literature concerning terrorism and human security. Literature from non-serial publications, official reports, and conferences has been included particularly if they have been cited by other references in connection with terrorism, food security, education security and terror cell groups. Findings from this study showed that activities of terror cell groups negatively affect education security and food security. This study concluded that there is the need for governments across board to identify and dislodge the insurgency economy profiting and prolonging the insurgency. This study therefore recommends that Borno state government in conjunction with intergovernmental bodies should consolidate further the Safe School Initiatives to further ensure safety of “at risk schools”. This study also recommends that the government across board should conscientiously stem the farming and market vulnerability of the farming community and prevent looming food insecurity.

Incompetent criminal deterrence and social insecurity: public spending and structural determinants of homicides

RESUMO Introdução: No contexto das políticas de segurança pública no Brasil, o conceito de dissuasão criminal sugere que medidas repressivas da polícia reduziriam a taxa de crimes, porque possíveis infratores considerariam a chance de serem detidos. Por outro lado, teorias disposicionais argumentam que a exclusão social e a ansiedade socioeconômica contribuiriam para a criminalidade violenta, causando tensões e enfraquecendo a coesão social. Este estudo investiga como fatores socioeconômicos e gastos públicos em segurança, saúde, educação e assistência social afetam os homicídios intencionais. Materiais e métodos: Testamos as duas ideias por meio de modelos de regressão multivariada em painel, analisando o efeito dos gastos públicos por habitante em segurança pública (proxy do policiamento) e em educação, assistência/previdência e saúde (proxy de políticas sociais) sobre a taxa ajustada de homicídios intencionais, controlados pelos dummies macrorregionais, desemprego, desigualdade, renda média, percentual de homens jovens, uso mórbido de drogas e oferta de armas de fogo. Resultados: Os investimentos sociais tiveram efeitos estatísticos de redução dos homicídios, enquanto o acesso a armas de fogo, o consumo de psicoativos, a renda média, o desemprego e o investimento em segurança pública provocaram aumento dos homicídios. A desigualdade de renda e a proporção de homens jovens não tiveram resultados consistentes. Dessa maneira, uma combinação de mecanismos situacionais e disposicionais parece a via mais promissora para explicar a incidência de crimes violentos e letais. Discussão: As políticas públicas de provisão de educação, saúde e assistência, de geração de emprego, de tratamento e prevenção ao uso de psicoativos e de controle de armas de fogo mostraram-se viáveis para a redução da violência criminal, mas o aumento do gasto no policiamento mostrou-se mais uma reação ineficaz à criminalidade violenta do que um instrumento para seu controle, indicando a ineficiência das políticas de segurança predominantes no Brasil.

Informal Amnesties in Asset Recovery Practices in Tanzania: Examining Criminal Justice Challenges

Since the turn of the century, amnesties began to feature in transnational criminal law as a tool to facilitate the recovery of criminal assets. In particular, the provisions of Article 26(3) of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, 2000, and, Article 37(3) of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, 2003 made it possible for States Parties to adopt measures within their legal systems to provide for amnesties to suspects who are ready to cooperate with law enforcement agencies in order to facilitate successfully prosecution of perpetrators of crime and consequently procure the recovery of criminal assets. This paper examines the use of amnesties in Tanzania, particularly, focusing on the 2008 and 2019 amnesties. The paper further investigates the extent to which such amnesties, which are implemented in Tanzania without necessary legislative framework, enhance asset recovery and criminal deterrence. Keywords: amnesty, asset recovery, corruption, criminal deterrence, criminal assets organized crime.

Near-Miss Deterrence: Incorporating Near-Miss Effects into Deterrence Theory

We investigate the applications of near-miss effects to theories of effective deterrence. Classical deterrence theory specifies two types of criminal deterrence: general deterrence, in which potential criminals are deterred from offending by the threat of punishment, and specific deterrence, in which criminals who have already offended are deterred from re-offending by experiences with punishment. In this paper, we introduce a novel category of deterrence–Near Miss Deterrence–that falls between general and specific deterrence. Under near-miss deterrence, transgressors do not experience punishment directly, but rather feel a sense of subjective closeness to an avoided punishment and adjust their behavior accordingly. Across two experimental studies (N = 2,049), we study how individuals behave after getting away with a first instance of cheating, and demonstrate the deterrent effects of near misses. We show that participants who cheat and experience subsequent close calls with punishment reduce their cheating in levels comparable to cheaters who are punished. By contrast, participants who avoid punishment by wider margins do not decrease their cheating. We do not find evidence that this effect is driven by transient shifts in affect. These results have important implications for theories of deterrence and for policy. Note: The first two authors contributed equally to this work

Theory of Social Proof and Legal Compliance: A Socio-Cognitive Explanation for Regulatory (Non) Compliance

AbstractChallenging the assumption of perfect legal knowledge, this Article employs social psychology to better understand how individuals make decisions about legal compliance under imperfect information conditions. It adapts the informational aspects of “social influence conception of criminal deterrence” to regulatory compliance at large. However, it conceptualizes social influence as more than just “visible deterrence.” Social Psychology helps us to understand who, how many, and what kind of behaviors constitute adequate social proof to guide an individual’s decision on compliance. Additionally, the interaction of social proof and legal compliance is considered within a dynamic framework in relation to specific rules and across the system. Within this framework, compliance/non-compliance cascades across different rules and can create a perception about legal compliance at large, which in turn guides initial expectations with respect to new laws. Over time, this can create high/low compliance equilibriums within which societies operate. Understanding this informational role that social influence plays in legal compliance can further our understanding of what motivates compliance, the potency of the expressive functions of law in societies operating within different compliance equilibriums, and inform policy discussions on how to improve compliance—both voluntary and through sanction/incentives.

Government Ethics in the Age of Trump

Americans’ trust in government officials has never been lower. Despite the intense public focus on ethics in government in recent years, legal scholarship on the subject has been sparse. This Article fills the gap by examining the ethics regime of the federal executive branch in depth, with a discussion of both the applicable ethics standards and the agencies and offices that are charged with ensuring that government officials comply with those standards. The Article describes how the current system heavily emphasizes prevention, education, and highly detailed disclosures while it rarely enforces the law against wrongdoers. A federal official in the United States is literally more likely to be struck by lightning than to be charged with violating a government ethics law. The Article then considers the federal government’s ethics regime through the lens of criminal deterrence theory and concludes that the current system is an example of what not to do if the goal is to discourage violations. To address this deficiency, the Article proposes a number of reforms to the current system to improve the deterrent effect of federal ethics standards, including a radical reimagining of the authority of government ethics officials.

Criminal Deterrence when There Are Offsetting Risks: Traffic Cameras, Vehicular Accidents, and Public Safety

Numerous cities have enacted electronic monitoring programs at traffic intersections in an effort to reduce the high number of vehicle accidents. The rationale is that the higher expected fines for running a red light will induce drivers to stop and lead to fewer cross-road collisions. However, the cameras also incentivize drivers to accept a greater accident risk from stopping. We evaluate the termination of a monitoring program via a voter referendum using 12 years of geocoded police accident data. We find that the cameras changed the composition of accidents but no evidence of a reduction in total accidents or injuries. (JEL D72, K42, R41)

Criminal Deterrence: A Review of the Missing Literature

This review of the criminal deterrence literature focuses on the questions that are largely missing from many recent excellent and comprehensive reviews of that literature and even from the literature itself. By “missing” I mean, first, questions that criminal deterrence scholars have ignored either completely or to a large extent. These questions range from fundamental (the distributional analysis of the criminal justice system) to those hidden in plain sight (economic analysis of misdemeanors), to those that are well-known yet mostly overlooked (the role of positive incentives, offender’s mental state, and celerity of punishment). Second, I use “missing” to refer to the areas where substantial relevant knowledge exists but is largely disregarded within the criminal deterrence research program. The empirical analysis of environmental and tax compliance is a stark example. Finally, I stretch “missing” to describe topics that have been both studied and reviewed but where substantial challenges remain. These include the theoretical explanation for the role of offense history, the proper accounting for the offender’s gains, the estimation of the costs of various crimes, and the cost-benefit analysis of crime-reduction policies.Among the literature’s missing pieces, several stand out both on their own and because they combine to produce a highly unfortunate result. First, although the empirical side of the literature focuses almost exclusively on street crime, the literature makes only a minor effort to estimate the cost of crime and essentially no effort to estimate the cost of white-collar offenses. This adds to the impression—not supported by the available evidence—that street crime is a great social problem while white-collar crime is a minor one. Second, the literature fails to treat misdemeanors and misdemeanor enforcement as an independent subject of study. This failure contributes to the notion—also unjustified—that 13 million or so misdemeanor charges a year and countless millions of stops, frisks, and interrogations that lead to no charges—all heavily skewed by race and class—are also not a major social problem. Third, the literature is only starting to develop a benefit-cost analysis of various crime-reducing strategies. The analysis considers almost exclusively measures reflected in the optimal deterrence model. This creates an impression—almost surely false—that deterrence is the only means of reducing future crime. Finally, the literature ignores distributional analysis altogether, even though the burdens of crime and the criminal justice system vary dramatically, predictably, and disturbingly by race and income. By disregarding this variation, the literature may be reinforcing it. For all these reasons, the criminal deterrence literature may well be contributing to the overwhelming, singular focus of American society and law enforcement on the forceful deterrence of street crime. Addressing the missing pieces would enrich the literature, expand its appeal and policy relevance, and enable academics to contribute to the effort of setting the US criminal justice system on the path of long overdue structural reforms.

Criminal Deterrence: Evidence from an Individual‐Level Analysis of 24/7 Sobriety

AbstractDecisionmakers continue to search for new ways to deter criminal behavior that do not rely on increasing the severity of punishment. This paper evaluates South Dakota's 24/7 Sobriety Program—a novel, large‐scale intervention requiring those arrested for or convicted of an alcohol‐related offense to abstain from alcohol and submit to alcohol tests multiple times daily. Those testing positive or missing a test receive a swift,certain, and moderate sanction; typically, a night or two in jail. To estimate the causal effect of the 24/7 program on the probability of rearrest or probation revocation for those arrested for a second or third driving under the influence (DUI) offense, we instrument an individual's 24/7 participation with program availability in the county of arrest. We estimate that the individual‐level probability of rearrest or probation revocation is 13.7 percentage points (49 percent; p = 0.002) lower for 24/7 participants than non‐participants 12 months after their DUI arrest. We detect substantive decreases at 24 and 36 months, but the precision of those estimates depends on model specification. These findings provide empricial support for applying “swift‐certain‐fair” sanctions to deter noncompliance in community supervision settings. This paper also provides policymakers with evidence for a new approach to reduce criminal activity among those whose alcohol use leads them to repeatedly threaten public health and safety.

Reprint of "Executive dysfunction, violence and aggression"

Abstract Executive Functio1ns (EFs) is an umbrella expression used for several processes and subprocesses encompassing goal-oriented behavior and decision-making strategies. However, the extent to which impaired EFs relate to and characterize different types of criminal behavior and aggressiveness is not clear. Similarly, research on the association between EFs and psychopathy has also produced mixed findings. The failure to disaggregate between different types of crime and antisocial individuals can impede the identification of specific neurocognitive mechanisms associated with crime. We reviewed the extent to which EFs (according to Miyake latent variable analysis) are associated with violent and non-violent crime, impulsive and premeditated aggression as well as psychopathic traits. Findings, although nonconsensual, suggest a more nuanced view on the association between EFs and crime, suggesting that different executive domains might be more compromised in violent and impulsive individuals, and specific psychopathy facets are more associated with executive dysfunction and criminality. Studies in line with this approach will allow offenders to benefit from intervention strategies that will address their specific deficits, optimizing their EFs and contributing to better cognitive management in demanding and complex situations, such as criminal and violent deterrence.

Criminal deterrence theory: the history, myths & realities.

Criminal deterrence theory: the history, myths & realities.

On the Public Finance of Capital Punishment

A capital trial is a costly affair. When a local government bears the expense of trial, it must raise funds or reallocate them from other sources. In Texas, among other states, the cost of trial is borne primarily at the county level. A panel of Texas county spending over the last decade, constructed from audited financial statements, shows counties meet the expense of trial by raising property tax rates and by reducing public safety expenditure. Property crime rises as a consequence of the latter. The death penalty may therefore impede criminal deterrence if its finance is left to local, rather than centralized government.

Assessing the Evolution of Cryptocurrency: Demand Factors, Latent Value and Regulatory Developments

The purpose of this paper is to assess the evolution of cryptocurrency including its demand factors, latent value propositions and regulatory developments. The cryptocurrency market has experienced unprecedented growth driven by improved ease of access, speculation, familiarity, media attention, network effects, mining activity, distrust of traditional banking, global instability hedging, and a demand effect from the initial coin offering (ICO) market. This had led to wide asset bubble speculation. The future of cryptocurrency is impossible to predict, and although it is unlikely that cryptocurrency will eliminate trusted intermediaries, and replace sovereign fiat altogether, it has numerous latent value propositions and long-term use cases including distributed ledger technology (DLT) and blockchain innovations (particularly in financial payments, settlements, clearing, supply chain, agriculture, and voting), identity and data protection mechanisms, crowd-funding, and decentralized business applications and services.There may also be benefits to a bubble including “long tail” successes, hype-financed research and development in DLT and blockchain infrastructure (that wouldn’t have otherwise received funding in a reticent market), and consumer familiarity benefits. The regulatory response to date has largely been enforcement based (emphasizing fraud detection and criminal deterrence), with public statements and interest across a diverse range of regulatory bodies, rather than unified rules. There are however inherent difficulties in regulating the cryptocurrency market, which will be discussed in detail in this paper.

Criminal Deterrence When There are Offsetting Risks: Traffic Cameras, Vehicular Accidents, and Public Safety

Numerous cities have enacted electronic monitoring programs at traffic intersections in an effort to reduce the high number of vehicle accidents. The rationale is that the higher expected fines for running a red light will induce drivers to stop and lead to fewer cross-road collisions. However, the cameras also incentivize drivers to accept a greater accident risk from stopping. We evaluate the termination of a monitoring program via a voter referendum using 12 years of geo-coded police accident data. We find that the cameras changed the composition of accidents, but no evidence of a reduction in total accidents or injuries.

Criminal Deterrence: A Review of the Literature

We review economics research regarding the effect of police, punishments, and work on crime, with a particular focus on papers from the last twenty years. Evidence in favor of deterrence effects is mixed. While there is considerable evidence that crime is responsive to police and to the existence of attractive legitimate labor-market opportunities, there is far less evidence that crime responds to the severity of criminal sanctions. We discuss fruitful directions for future work and implications for public policy. (JEL J64, K42)

Threats and Criminal Deterrence in Several Dimensions

This Article's claim is that deterrence in criminal law is composed of four oft-competing goals that ought to be taken into account when calibrating sanctions. Consider an offender, such as an armed robber or kidnapper, who threatens to commit a yet more serious crime unless the victim surrenders. The first goal, or dimension, of deterrence is to deter the threat, or crime in general, and this suggests a high sanction for the armed robbery or other threatening crime. A second goal is to deter escalation, in this case the execution of the threat once issued. This goal normally suggests a large gap between the sanctions for lesser and greater crimes, in order to discourage escalation. Given a natural or practical ceiling to criminal penalties, the suggested gap often implies relatively low sanction for the lesser crime, or threat, and some sacrifice of direct deterrence. Two other goals, or dimensions of deterrence, have been unrecognized by academic commentators and legislatures. By extending the analysis to include behavior by victims, it becomes apparent that law ought to make the offender’s threat incredible to victims. If the threat can be weakened, victims will be less inclined to submit, and then offenders will have less reason to threaten in the first place. This third dimension suggests a large gap between the sanctions for the lesser (threat) and greater (execution) crimes; if the gap is small, victims will recognize that the offender has little to lose from continuing on and executing his threat, and these victims will submit and make the criminal’s threat profitable, thereby encouraging yet more criminal activity. A fourth, equally novel, dimension of deterrence is the ability of law to make incredible the implicit promise by a threatener not to escalate if the victim submits. When this implicit promise is incredible, victims will again tend not to submit to the threat, and offenders will in turn issue fewer threats. To achieve this goal, the sanction for repeating a threat following submission by the victim should be low; victims will be less apt to submit to a threat if they realize that submission will often bring on another crime, or threat. The idea — which should be applied with caution — is familiar from blackmail; a victim who thinks the blackmailer will return for further payments will not pay the first time, and the blackmailer, in turn, will be discouraged.Optimal deterrence requires that criminal law should be attentive to the four dimensions described above. This Article presents a model for how law can do so and better accomplish its deterrent function.

Irregular migration at the crossroads, between administrative removal and criminal deterrence: The Celaj Case

Irregular migration at the crossroads, between administrative removal and criminal deterrence: The <i>Celaj</i> Case

Deconstructing the Criminal Defence of Insanity

The significance of this article is in its deconstruction of the criminal insanity defence in a meta-legal critical context. The article’s objective is to critically review beliefs that the insanity defence was designed solely for public protection from insane violent people, or, for criminal deterrence. Arising from the long and continued use of the Roman Law concept of non compos mentis, the question arises as to what has become of the practical meaning of the term “insanity”, when used as a defence. The article tries to show that the defence of insanity is a public act of judicial denunciation against the accused, while the accused may have no effective responsibility for the crime. Argument begins with a critical discussion on the character of common-place denunciation as an appeal to public agreement. Then, it follows how the idea of “manifest criminality”, of the 1800s, might be cognate to modern ideas of “manifest madness”, linking into the origins of the English special verdict of insanity. This will allow a short critical analysis of the M’Naghten Case. Argument is completed with analysis of a psychologists’ expert construct of insanity and its relationship to jury perception. The article will suggest strongly that arguments based on the common law rules of insanity tend to expose juries more to denunciation of the accused, than to a reasoned account of the nature of his insanity and to the defects in his responsibility. Duly persuaded jurors would tend to acquiesce and participate in the denunciation of an accused person, whose unusual and unhealthy behaviours emanated from his sufferings by dint of his unbearable circumstances.

Deferred Corporate Prosecution as Corrupt Regime: The Case for Prison

This paper looks at the growing phenomenon of deferred corporate criminal prosecutions from a new perspective. The literature accepts the practice and is largely concerned with the degree to which efficient and effective criminal deterrence is achieved through pretrial diversion. I examine the practice and conclude that it presents, from a structural perspective, a case of a corrupt law enforcement regime centered in the United States Department of Justice. The regime works in effective – if unintentional – conspiracy with corporate officials to produce an inefficient enforcement regime that disregards democratic processes and threatens a loss of respect for the rule of law. I conclude that the use of individual prosecution with the possibility of prison for corporate executives is the most effective way to restore the corporate criminal regime to a functioning legal practice.

On the Sealing of Criminal Records, Stigma and Deterrence

Criminal convictions result in expected losses due to stigmatization. The magnitude of these losses depend on, among other things, the convict's future expected earnings. People who face larger wage reductions due to convictions suffer more from stigmatization. Intuition suggests that this asymmetry may lead to over- and under-deterrence problems. This intuitive deduction ignores the possibility that indirect harms from crime may be related to a person's wage, and therefore the stigma attached to conviction. I show that if wage cuts reflect employers' effort to match the reduction in convicts' productivity caused by their criminal activity, they cannot cause over-deterrence. However, over-deterrence is observed if stigmatization is caused by simple adverse selection problems. These over-deterrence problems can be mitigated or eliminated by offering convicts a costly opportunity to seal their criminal records. I construct a law enforcement model that incorporates these insights, and use it to identify relationships between equilibrium crime rates, expungement rates, formal sanctions, and the average pay of occupations. I consider various legal reforms in light of my findings.