Report: Deterrence is Based on Certainty of Apprehension, Not Severity of Punishment

The cer­tain­ty of appre­hen­sion, not the sever­i­ty of pun­ish­ment, is more effec­tive as a deter­rent. So argues Daniel S. Nagin (pic­tured), one of the nation’s fore­most schol­ars on deter­rence and crim­i­nal jus­tice pol­i­cy, in his chap­ter on Deterrence in the recent­ly released Academy for Justice four-vol­ume study, Reforming Criminal Justice. Reviewing deter­rence schol­ar­ship since the 1960s and five lead­ing stud­ies from the past two decades, Dr. Nagin con­cludes that evi­dence sup­port­ing a deter­rent effect from ​“the cer­tain­ty of pun­ish­ment is far more con­vinc­ing and con­sis­tent than for the sever­i­ty of pun­ish­ment.” Moreover, he writes, “[t]he cer­tain­ty of appre­hen­sion, and not the sever­i­ty of the ensu­ing legal con­se­quence, is the more effec­tive deter­rent.” Dr. Nagin is the Teresa and H. John Heinz III University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy and pre­vi­ous­ly chaired the Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty for the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science (NAS). In that capac­i­ty, he served as co-edi­tor of the 2012 National Academies report, Deterrence and the Death Penalty. Nagin explains in his Academy for Justice chap­ter that although ​“cer­tain­ty must result in a dis­taste­ful con­se­quence” for the pun­ish­ment to be a deter­rent, “[t]he con­se­quences need not be dra­con­ian, just suf­fi­cient­ly cost­ly, to deter the pro­hib­it­ed behav­ior.” In mak­ing pol­i­cy judg­ments about the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for increas­ing­ly severe sanc­tions, he says, ​“the deter­rent return to increas­ing an already long sen­tence appears to be small, pos­si­bly zero.” The 2012 NAS Committee found that ​“research to date on the effect of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment on homi­cide is not infor­ma­tive about whether cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment decreas­es, increas­es, or has no effect on homi­cide rates” and rec­om­mend­ed that those deter­rent stud­ies ​“not be used to inform delib­er­a­tions requir­ing judg­ments about the effect of the death penal­ty on homi­cide.” A February 2015 study by the Brennan Center for Justice of the dra­mat­ic drop in crime in the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s found that the death penal­ty had no effect on the decline in crime.

(D. Nagin, ​“Deterrence,” in ​“Reforming Criminal Justice: Bridging the Gap Between Scholarship and Reform,” vol. 4, ​“Punishment, Incarceration, and Release,” Academy for Justice, Arizona State University (E. Luna, edi­tor), release date October 26, 2017; D. Nagin and J. Pepper, ​“Deterrence and the Death Penalty,” Committee on Law and Justice at the National Research Council, April 2012.) See Books, Studies, and Deterrence.