The imposition of penalities for violation of criminal laws has been traditionally justified for such reasons as social justice and retribution. Today, perhaps the main justification for imposing severe penalties on those who violate the law is that such punishments serve as a specific deterrent to future violations by the offender and as a general deterrent to violations by others who might be tempted to follow his lead.

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In a critique of our paper, “Severity of Formal Sanctions as a Deterrent to Deviant Behavior” (Law and Society Review, 1970: 21-40), Professor Paul E. Meehl has questioned our interpretation of the data particularly in Table 3 of the original paper. On the basis of that evidence, we concluded that severity of formal sanctions show no direct deterrent effect on the deviant behavior under consideration, but do appear to have an indirect deterrent effect through their impact on the normative climate of the campus (p. 37). In challenging this interpretation of the data, Professor Meehl expressed concern that non social science readers of the Review might be misled by our use of “causal language” in the interpretation of these tabulations from cross sectional data.

Despite the resurgence of the liberal arts, an undergraduate curriculum still requires a synthesis of liberal and practical learning.