General Deterrence Research Articles

Drink driving during the COVID-19 pandemic

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, static roadside random breath testing (RBT) was temporarily suspended between 16 March and 12 June 2020 in Queensland, Australia. In addition to restrictions on travel and social interactions, this provided a unique opportunity to examine changes in drink-driving behaviour during and after a reduction in RBT operations in the community. Three cross-sectional surveys were disseminated at different time points to examine these differences. Over three surveys, 1193 Queensland licensed drivers aged 18 years and over (M = 36.9, SD = 16.7) responded. While overall drink driving decreased over the three survey periods, there were groups where drink driving, or the intention to drink drive, increased over the same period. The overall decrease could be expected as a result of community restrictions on socialising and travel behaviours. In each of the surveys, prior engagement in drink driving was the strongest predictor of intention to increase future engagement and actual engagement. These drink drivers were more likely aged 18–24 years, male, and held restricted licensure. Notably, a small number of participants who reported drink driving, and/or intention to drink drive during the survey period, reported not having engaged in this behaviour previously. This suggested an increased likelihood of drink drivers experiencing punishment avoidance which may promote future engagement in this behaviour. Despite a decrease in social opportunities to drink, and the suspension of highly visible roadside breath testing sites, drink driving persisted. This research highlights the importance of RBTs as a general deterrent for drink driving.

An Empirical Evaluation of the Impact of New York's Bail Reform on Crime Using Synthetic Controls

We conduct an empirical evaluation of the impact of New York's bail reform on crime. New York State's Bail Elimination Act went into effect on January 1, 2020, eliminating money bail and pretrial detention for nearly all misdemeanor and nonviolent felony defendants. Our analysis of effects on aggregate crime rates after the reform informs the understanding of bail reform and general deterrence. We conduct a synthetic control analysis for a comparative case study of impact of bail reform. We focus on synthetic control analysis of post-intervention changes in crime for assault, theft, burglary, robbery, and drug crimes, constructing a dataset from publicly reported crime data of 27 large municipalities. Our findings, including placebo checks and other robustness checks, show that for assault, theft, and drug crimes, there is no significant impact of bail reform on crime; for burglary and robbery, we similarly have null findings but the synthetic control is also more variable so these are deemed less conclusive.

Cracking Self-Defense's Intractable 'Difficult Cases'

Cracking Self-Defense's Intractable 'Difficult Cases'

The price of expungements

Expungement mechanisms allow first-time offenders to seal their criminal record. Theory predicts that the stigma of a criminal record can hinder the reintegration of criminals for whom legal activities are less lucrative. In theory, expungements priced at the reservation level can facilitate the reintegration of criminals without making first-time crime more attractive. This paper considers a behavioral perspective and offers experimental evidence about the impact of expungements priced at different levels. To do this, we set up a laboratory experiment where subjects repeatedly face opportunities to commit crime (take money from another subject). In addition to stochastic formal sanctions – imposed by the experimenter – we introduce endogenously determined social sanctions. In our main treatments of interest, subjects who choose the wrongful action have the opportunity to expunge their record prior to the second stage, thus avoiding social sanctions as long as they do not recidivate. Overall, our experiment shows that, from a general deterrence perspective, it is better to implement expungements at very high prices. We offer an explanation for this result based on the idea that the price of expungements may signal the moral reprehensibility of the offense.

From Reprisals to Criminal Accountability: State Bias and the Prospects of Limiting War Through Law

Abstract Over the past 25 years, criminal prosecutions for war crimes have become a central element in the long-standing project of governing hostilities in international law. According to many, the threat of criminal prosecutions can be a general deterrent against violations of the laws of war, and can contribute more broadly to the diffusion and domestic appropriation of humanitarian norms. This article discusses some unintended effects of this “anti-impunity turn” in the laws of war in the context of non-international armed conflicts. Specifically, it examines the consequences of the fact that states typically have a monopoly over the means of legitimate criminal investigation for alleged crimes committed in their territory. Far from operating on a level playing field, criminal investigations in war contexts must be undertaken under institutional conditions that tend to favor state agents over non-state opposition groups. The article spells out some implications of this form of state bias and argues that it can contribute to exacerbate conflict and prolong violence in war.

Disclosure policies in inspection programs: The role of specific deterrence

In inspection programs, policies of disclosing inspection performance promote greater compliance via general deterrence—i.e., by increasing the expected cost of regulatory violations. Yet, despite their growing popularity as regulatory aids, an unexamined matter is how specific deterrence – deterrence that follows from receiving punishment – might influence the effectiveness of disclosure policies. In Las Vegas, Nevada, food-service health inspections are scored numerically. Using a simple grading scale, scores are then coarsened into letter grades which restaurants must prominently display. There is, however, a wrinkle to this grading scale: establishments committing the same violation in consecutive inspections are downgraded one letter. By virtue of this downgrade rule, punishment assignment varies among identically scored inspections. Relative to establishments with identical sequences of prior inspection scores, I find that restaurants are assessed 17%–27% fewer demerits following a downgrade. This substantial specific deterrence effect has important implications for the design of disclosure policies; particularly, regarding the coarsening of numeric scores into letter grades.

How to deal with corruption? Examining the roles of e-government maturity, government administrative effectiveness, and virtual social networks diffusion

The role of e-government in combating corruption is an active area of research in Information Systems (IS). Drawing on the value framework for assessing e-government impact, and grounding our discussion on three theoretical perspectives, namely, (1) technological determinism theory, (2) general deterrence theory, and (3) Habermas’ public sphere perspective, we seek to explore how the diffusion of virtual social networks (VSNs) influences the relationships among e-government maturity, government administrative effectiveness, and corruption in a country. Our analyses based on publicly available archival data substantiate the (1) indirect relationships between e-government maturity in a country and corruption in three branches of its government (i.e., legislature, executive, and judiciary) through government administrative effectiveness, (2) interaction effect of VSN diffusion on the relationship between e-government maturity in a country and its government administrative effectiveness, and (3) interaction effects of VSN diffusion on the relationships between government administrative effectiveness in a country and its corruption dimensions. The key contributions of this research include the establishment of the (1) role of e-government in combating corruption in three branches of the government, and (2) idea of the public sphere in the context of VSN diffusion, and the subsequent exploration of its effects on e-government outcomes of a country.

A descriptive study of the effect of a disciplinary proceeding decision on medical practitioners' practice behaviour in the context of providing a hydrocortisone and lignocaine injection.

We conducted a descriptive study to evaluate any changes in practice behaviour regarding the provision of hydrocortisone and lignocaine (H&L) injections among doctors and how an H&L injection is priced following a disciplinary proceeding decision. A doctor had been fined SGD 100,000 for failing to obtain informed consent before an H&L injection. We performed a survey shortly after the disciplinary decision to ascertain: (a) the category of the respondent; (b) whether the respondent provided H&L injections and how much he charged before the decision; and (c) after the decision. All members of the Singapore Medical Association and College of Family Physicians Singapore are doctors and were invited to participate. 1,927 doctors responded to the survey. Prior to the decision, 804 doctors did not perform H&L injections; this increased by 20.4% to 968 after the decision. The number of doctors who gave H&L injections decreased by 164 (14.6%), from the previous 1,123. Pre-decision, doctors who determined their own price for H&L injections charged a median pricing ≤ SGD 100. Post-decision, the median charge rose to > SGD 100 to SGD 200. At higher price bands, the number of doctors who charged > SGD 1,000 increased eight-fold, from eight to 65. The study demonstrated how a disciplinary decision can affect practice behaviour, and specifically how doctors may choose to not offer a service, an example of defensive medicine through avoidance behaviour. It also showed how prices for a service can rise following such a decision, which demonstrates the concept of negative general deterrence in sentencing.

General Deterrence of Systemic International Misconduct: The Role of Firms’ Territoriality Beliefs

For decades, Swiss banks’ private wealth management (PWM) business had systemically engaged in organizational misconduct based on jurisdictional arbitrage. Swiss banks complied with Swiss regulations, but persistently transgressed United States (U.S.) law by helping clients evade U.S. tax liabilities. Our interpretive study explores why the U.S. government’s enforcement of U.S. law (the challenger’s territoriality, i.e. claims of authority over a certain actor, geographic, and issue scope) against some Swiss banks eventually deterred not only prosecuted banks (specific deterrence) but also observing peers (general deterrence) from violating U.S. law. We identify observers’ territoriality beliefs about the scope of the challenger’s territory and about their conduct’s location within or outside that perceived territory as the critical factor for general deterrence. Such beliefs are shaped by the challenger’s, incumbent’s scope of territoriality claims, and the level of ambiguity of the challenger’s claims. Our study contributes to institutional, regulatory and territoriality scholarship.

Curbing Cyberloafing: Studying General and Specific Deterrence Effect with Field Evidence

Although the General Deterrence Theory has frequently been employed to study the prevention of misconduct associated with computer use, the common reliance on survey data makes it difficult to measure the general and specific deterrence effects. We use one-group pretest-posttest quasi-experiment based on data from a monitoring system covering 230 employees for nine months to study general and specific effects of two interventions: the reminder about possible punishment of cyberloafers and the actual punishment. The interrupted time series analysis (ITSA) with ARIMA modelling employed to study the longitudinal effects of the interventions allowed to deliver novel findings. Punishing the violators of organizational policy affected both the punished and unpunished employees (decrease in cyberloafing by 41% and 24%, respectively). The effect was maintained for three months, that is until the end of our dataset. The punishment had a stronger effect on unpunished employees located closer in the organizational structure to the punished ones than on the remaining unpunished employees. Moreover, we show that reminder about the possibility of punishment brought no statistically significant effect, likely due to the earlier experience of punishment avoidance. We discuss implications for theory and designing organizational policies intended to curb cyberloafing.

Drug Dealers, Retaliation, and Deterrence

Abstract Background Illicit drug sellers have limited access to formal mediation and therefore are rational targets to predators. As such, dealers are especially reliant on retaliation to deter victimization. Prior scholarship on dealers, retaliation, and deterrence has focused largely on general deterrence, or the effect of punishing one person on others. Research is yet to shed much light on other types of deterrence that dealers engage in. Methods This paper addresses that gap by drawing on qualitative data obtained in interviews with 25 unincarcerated drug sellers from disadvantaged neighborhoods in St. Louis, Missouri. Results We find that dealers' use of retaliation is linked to four kinds of deterrence—general, specific, situational, and permeating—and that these are combined into three forms: namely, specific-situational; specific-permeating; and comprehensive (i.e., all four kinds simultaneously). Conclusion Implications for research, theory, and criminal justice are discussed. Specifically, we call for future scholarship to examine how each type of deterrence affects the others, and suggest that both predation against and retaliation by drug dealers might be reduced by granting them greater access to formal means of dispute resolution.

THE IMPACT OF TRIPS ON IPRs PROTECTION IN JORDAN, AS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF A DEVELOPING COUNTRY

In the last few decades, the developing countries have witnessed a remarkable increase in the infringement of intellectual property rights thus conventions and treaties were held to reduce these infringements, in particular, the TRIPS Treaty (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).This study attempts to explain the causes of intellectual property rights infringements and the efficient means for intellectual property rights protections by taking Jordan as an example. The study finds that TRIPS Treaty, which is the latest international action to enhance the protection level, consumer's ethical attitude, development expenditure, economic policies, weakness of law enforcement, and low-income in developing countries are important factors to explain the level of IP protection. Because of all of these, the infringements became a phenomenon in developing countries that firstly need amendments in their intellectual property laws to apply the criminal sanctions jointly by civil remedies, owing to the fact of the shock value or general deterrence to enhance the commitment to the law and to remit this phenomenon, furthermore, the state will follow up on the cost of prosecution without involving the owners of the rights personally in many cases. On the other hand, literature revealed that the infringements of IPRs became a phenomenon because the TRIPS Treaty prepared for the benefits of the large companies, thus the developing countries' legislation, economic and consumer's ethical attitude got affected negatively. In addition, the developed countries threatened them by sanctions if they didn't make retroactively amendments on their legislation, which also led to prevent them to adopt the necessary measures that mitigate the negative impact on their economic and social life. Regarding the applied research method, this paper used secondary data sources and applied the descriptive and comparative analytical legal approaches to illustrate the most important points and findings on the topic.

The Anti-deterrence Hypothesis

Abstract Although there is by now considerable debate on how much general deterrence effect international criminal justice has, there has been far less discussion of a discreet dimension that has long been identified in the criminology literature, namely the possibility that criminal justice would have an anti-deterrent effect. Along what lines, then, might we understand international criminal justice to be partly ‘criminogenic’? This article sketches some ways in which this phenomenon might be understood, taking into account the specificities of international justice. It argues that the risk of further violence by suspects, of imperfect justice revealing its weaknesses and creating a backlash, and of romanticization of ‘outlaws’ can all count as potential anti-deterrent effects, although their significance for the larger project remains hard to gauge.

Curbing cyberloafing: studying general and specific deterrence effects with field evidence

ABSTRACT Although the General Deterrence Theory has frequently been employed to study the prevention of misconduct associated with computer use, the common reliance on survey data makes it difficult to measure the general and specific deterrence effects. We use one-group pre-test-post-test quasi-experiment based on data from a monitoring system covering 230 employees for nine months to study general and specific effects of two interventions: the reminder about possible punishment and the actual punishment. The interrupted time series analysis (ITSA) with ARIMA modelling employed to study the longitudinal effects of the interventions allowed to deliver novel findings. Punishing the violators of organisational policy affected both the punished and unpunished employees (decrease in cyberloafing by 41% and 24%, respectively). The effect was maintained for three months, that is until the end of our dataset. The punishment had a stronger effect on unpunished employees located closer in the organisational structure to the punished ones than on the remaining unpunished employees. Moreover, we show that reminder about the possibility of punishment brought no statistically significant effect, likely due to the earlier experience of punishment avoidance. We discuss implications for theory and designing organisational policies intended to curb cyberloafing.

Systematic Literature Review of Information Security Compliance Behaviour Theories

The paper aims to identify behavioural theories that influence information security policies compliance behaviour. A systematic review of empirical studies from eleven online databases (ACM digital library, Emerald Insight, IEEE Xplore digital library, Springer link, Science direct, Scopus, Web of Science, Oxford academic journals, SAGE journals, Taylor & Francis and Wiley online library) are conducted. This review identified 29 studies met its criterion for inclusion. The investigated theories were extracted and analysed. Total of 19 theories have been identified and studied concerning to security policy compliance behaviour. The result indicated that the most established theories in information security compliance behaviour studies are the Theory of Planned Behavior and Protection Motivation theory. Meanwhile, General Deterrence Theory, Neutralization theory, Social Bond Theory / Social Control Theory are used moderately in this research area. Less explored theories are namely Self Determination Theory, Knowledge, Attitude, and Behavior, Social Cognitive Theory, Involvement Theory, Health belief model, Theory of Interpersonal Behavior, Extended Parallel Processing Model, Organisational Control Theory, Psychological Reactance Theory, Norm Activation Theory, Organizational Behaviour Theory, Cognitive Evaluation Theory and Extended Job Demands-Resources. The results from this review may guide the development and evaluation of theories promoting information security compliance behaviours. This will further contribute in the development of an integrated theory of information security compliance behaviour.

Rola broni nuklearnej w izraelskiej strategii odstraszania militarnego

The aim of the article is to answer the question: What role does nuclear weapon play in Israeli strategy of deterrence? The main hypothesis of the paper is based on the assumption, that the deterrence potential of the Israeli nuclear arsenal is strictly determined by deliberate ambiguity (so-called amimut). The author also assumes that nuclear deterrence plays a significant role in the general Israeli deterrence strategy. However, due to the changing nature of threats, it is not its core element. The author used the following theoretical research methods: critical analysis and comparative analysis of sources, scientific studies, strategic documents as well as selected speeches of the Israeli authorities. This article can be seen as an attempt to capture the specifics of the Israeli nuclear deterrence strategy and the features that distinguish it from deterrence of other nuclear states.

Information Security Policy Compliance

One of the most challenging problems modern firms face is that their weakest link in maintaining information security is the behavior of employees: clicking on phishing emails, telling friends and family private information, and searching for private information about themselves (Loch et al. 1992; Mitnick and Simon 2001; Warkentin and Willison 2009a). A survey conducted by the Computer Security Institute reported that the average monetary loss per incident was $288,618 and that 44% of those who responded to the survey reported insider security-related abuse, making it the second-most frequently occurring computer security incident (Richardson and Director 2008). This paper uses a questionnaire from Hu, et al. (2017) to test for the efficacy of different reward and punishment schemes in preventing insider security-related abuse. Hu, et al.’s (2015) scenarios elicit from participants whether they would recommend violating company IT policies. Real monetary payments provide motivation. The results indicate that, if a company can detect abuses with some degree of certainty, the best strategy among those tested is to regularly reward individual employees with small rewards for complying with company policy and punish every detected violation. This recommendation contrasts with the existing literature, which focuses almost entirely on punishment for detected security breaches. This focus on punishment is referred to as General Deterrence Theory (Straub, Jr., 1990). The results in this paper suggest strongly that General Deterrence Theory does not provide an effective strategy for preventing security breaches.

Breath tests in Western Australia: Examining the economic dividends and effectiveness of general deterrence

In this paper, we examine the relationship between traffic enforcement (in the form of roadside breath testing for alcohol) and traffic outcomes (alcohol-related traffic crashes) to identify an optimal point of traffic enforcement.In Western Australia (WA), Police are authorised to stop any driver and measure their blood alcohol concentration via a sample of their breath. Using a metric employed by Ferris et al. (2013) and a methodology analogous to that utilised by Cameron (2013), we model the relationship between alcohol related traffic crashes and the saturation of breath testing in WA from January 2008 to April 2018. Our analysis suggests that given the saturation of breath testing in 2018 (1.2 tests per licenced driver), a 10 % increase in breath testing would be associated with a decline of 0.34 alcohol related traffic crashes (ARTC) per 100,000 drivers per month, equating to six fewer crashes per month, state-wide.In addition, using ‘willingness to pay’ and human capital cost metrics to approximate the social costs of ARTC, we employ a cost-benefit analysis to estimate the point at which the social costs of ARTC equal the economic costs of breath tests. Our analysis suggests that an increase in the number of tests to 143 % of all licensed WA drivers (an increase of 450,000 breath tests from the 2017/18 financial year) would be anticipated to save the state AUD$13.3 million annually in the human capital costs of ARTC. Our findings suggest that a further increase in breath tests to 154% of all licensed WA drivers (an increase of 650,000 breath tests from 2017/18) may save the state AUD$31.0 million annually in willingness to pay costs.The analytics below present a novel combination of methods to approximate the relative economic merits of increases in traffic enforcement. Furthermore, the findings outlined here have practical applications for operational policing, while providing an analytical perspective for policy makers faced with making recommendations regarding the volume and saturation of breath tests.

Privatization of the Police

This paper deals with civilian private security in relation to public police. It first elaborates on the specific legal norms that govern public and private security personnel and shows that the rise of private security is not the outcome of privatization in the usual sense of the term. It proceeds to present some facts on private security, a large and fast-growing industry in many countries. The following section deals with the sources of the demand for private security and its impact on security. We show that this impact is conceptually different from that of public police in a constitutional rule of law state. Private security aims at achieving efficient levels of losses from crime. Public police aim at equal protection of citizens against crimes. The different objectives have different consequences on security and on the wealth distribution of citizens. Furthermore, private security usually does not create general deterrence. Also, deployment of security personnel generates crime diversion, which the public police take into consideration, whereas private security has no incentive to do so. We then elaborate on the diverging effects of private versus public security services on the rights of criminal suspects, on the rule of law, and on democratic accountability. The paper concludes with a review of empirical findings on the effectiveness of private security for reducing crime levels, which show significant effects.

Crazy Like a Fox? Are Leaders with Reputations for Madness More Successful at International Coercion?

AbstractAccording to the ‘Madman Theory’ promoted by Richard Nixon and early rationalist scholars, being viewed as mentally unstable can help a leader coerce foreign adversaries. This article offers the first large-N test of this theory. The author introduces an original perception-based measure of leaders' reputations for madness, coded based on news reports, and analyzes its effect on both general deterrence and crisis bargaining. The study also tests several hypotheses about the conditions under which perceived madness is expected to be more or less helpful. The author finds that perceived madness is harmful to general deterrence and is sometimes also harmful in crisis bargaining, but may be helpful in crisis bargaining under certain conditions. The analysis suggests that the harmful effect of perceived madness results from a commitment problem.