U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE FIVE THINGS ABOUT
DETERRENCE
Deter would-be criminals by using scientific evidence about human behavior and perceptions about the costs, risks and rewards of crime. 1. The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment.
More severe punishments do not “chasten” individuals convicted of crimes, and prisons may exacerbate recidivism.
Research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent than even draconian punishment.
See “Understanding the Relationship Between Sentencing and Deterrence” for additional discussion on the severity of punishment.
2. Sending an individual convicted of a crime to prison isn’t a very effective way to deter crime.
5. There is no proof that the death penalty deters criminals.
Prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, but prison sentences (particularly long sentences) are unlikely to deter future crime. Prisons actually may have the opposite effect: Inmates learn more effective crime strategies from each other, and time spent in prison may desensitize many to the threat of future imprisonment. See “Understanding the Relationship Between Sentencing and Deterrence” for additional discussion on prison as an ineffective deterrent.
3. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished. The police deter crime when they do things that strengthen a criminal’s perception of the certainty of being caught. Strategies that use the police as “sentinels,” such as hot spots policing, are particularly effective. A criminal’s behavior is more likely to be influenced by seeing a police officer with handcuffs and a radio than by a new law increasing penalties.
4. Increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime. Laws and policies designed to deter crime by focusing mainly on increasing the severity of punishment are ineffective partly because criminals know little about the sanctions for specific crimes.
According to the National Academy of Sciences, “Research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment is uninformative about whether capital punishment increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates.” In his 2013 essay, “Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century,” Daniel S. Nagin succinctly summarized the current state of theory and empirical knowledge about deterrence. The information in this publication is drawn from Nagin’s essay with additional context provided by NIJ and is presented here to help those who make policies and laws that are based on science. Source: Daniel S. Nagin, “Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century,” in Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, vol. 42: Crime and Justice in America: 1975-2025, ed. Michael Tonry, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.1 The content on this page is not intended to create, does not create, and may not be relied upon to create any rights, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by any party in any matter civil or criminal. Findings and conclusions of the research reported here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
National Institute of Justice • Strengthen Science • Advance Justice May 2016 NCJ 247350