{"id":12247,"date":"2010-11-23T22:57:12","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T03:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=12247"},"modified":"2010-11-23T23:00:54","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T04:00:54","slug":"the-dead-end-of-deterrence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/11\/the-dead-end-of-deterrence\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dead End of Deterrence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Sentencing Project has a new report <\/a>out that summarizes research on the effectiveness of criminal punishment as a deterrent.\u00a0 It\u2019s nothing pathbreaking, but it does offer a nice, succinct statement of the evidence against robust deterrence effects.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the conclusion:<\/p>\n

Existing evidence does not support any significant public safety benefit of the practice of increasing the severity of sentences by imposing longer prison terms. In fact, research findings imply that increasingly lengthy prison terms are counterproductive. Overall, the evidence indicates that the deterrent effect of lengthy prison sentences would not be substantially diminished if punishments were reduced from their current levels. Thus, policies such as California\u2019s Three Strikes law or mandatory minimums that increase imprisonment not only burden state budgets, but also fail to enhance public safety. As a result, such policies are not justifiable based on their ability to deter.<\/p>\n

Based upon the existing evidence, both crime and imprisonment can be simultaneously reduced if policy-makers reconsider their overreliance on severity-based policies such as long prison sentences. Instead, an evidence-based approach would entail increasing the certainty of punishment by improving the likelihood that criminal behavior would be detected. Such an approach would also free up resources devoted to incarceration and allow for increased initiatives of prevention and treatment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ll offer\u00a0four reactions of my own.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First, criminal punishment does deter in the sense that people are less likely to commit crimes when you have a functional criminal justice system than when you don\u2019t have one.\u00a0 But no one is seriously suggesting that we abolish the criminal justice system.\u00a0 The real question for policy debate is whether increasing the degree of punishment beyond what is already imposed for any given category of crime will reduce the incidence of that crime.\u00a0 Although there is intuitive appeal to the proposition that more punishment inevitably means less crime, the research provides little support for the proposition.<\/p>\n

Second, if increasing punishment across the board for a category of crime (e.g., by adopting a mandatory minimum statute) cannot reliably produce future reductions in crime, then it seems even less likely that an individual sentencing judge\u2019s decision\u00a0to \u201cmake an example\u201d of a particular defendant\u00a0will reduce crime.\u00a0 When I\u00a0hear of\u00a0a judge imposing an unusually long sentence in the name of deterrence, this often strikes me as an act of extraordinary and ill-advised hubris.\u00a0 Rather than aiming for large-scale social effects, I would much rather see sentencing judges focusing on the individual human beings before them: the defendants, victims, and concerned family and community\u00a0members.<\/p>\n

Third, although I would generally discount deterrence in setting sentencing policy or making sentencing decisions in particular cases, it is possible that certain categories of crimes are more susceptible to deterrence than others.\u00a0 In particular, it is possible that economic crimes perpetrated by white-collar offenders do indeed involve the sort of rational cost-benefit analysis that deterrence theory depends on.\u00a0 In the federal system, there has been\u00a0much effort since the 1980\u2019s to move away from probation as the standard\u00a0punishment\u00a0for white-collar offenders\u00a0and towards\u00a0real prison time.\u00a0 I have not seen any research indicating whether initiatives along these lines may offer more deterrence benefits than, say, mandatory minimums for street criminals.<\/p>\n

Finally, the Setencing Project report suggests, as many psychologists and criminologists have also done over the years, that increasing the\u00a0certainty <\/em>of punishment produces greater deterrence benefits than increasing the\u00a0severity<\/em>.\u00a0 Along these lines, I find it intriguing to contemplate a \u201cgrand bargain\u201d between criminal law conservatives and liberals. \u00a0Liberals would surrender the procedural rights for defendants that make conviction of the guilty less certain. \u00a0Most clearly, I think, this would mean abandoning the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. \u00a0Other candidates would include\u00a0Miranda<\/em> and\u00a0Crawford<\/em>. \u00a0For their part, conservatives would give up mandatory minimums and life sentences. \u00a0The result would be more certain, but less severe punishment. \u00a0The payoff might be a criminal justice system that is both more humane and more effective at deterring crime.<\/p>\n

Cross posted at Life Sentences Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sentencing Project has a new report out that summarizes research on the effectiveness of criminal punishment as a deterrent.\u00a0 It\u2019s nothing pathbreaking, but it does offer a nice, succinct statement of the evidence against robust deterrence effects.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the conclusion: Existing evidence does not support any significant public safety benefit of the practice of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}