Perceptual change in the national youth survey: lessons for deterrence theory and offender decision‐making

Abstract

Most deterrence research has investigated how perceptions about sanction threats influence decisions to offend. Far less scholarship has investigated the processes in which sanction threat perceptions are formed and modified. In this study, we advance and test a theoretical framework in which perceptions of the certainty of punishment are a function of the offending experiences and consequences of both the actor and others. Some of the empirical implications of this framework are tested with data from the National Youth Survey. The findings include: (1) Arrests had little effect on perceptions of the certainty of punishment for stealing and attacking; (2) In contrast, offending corresponded with decreases in the perceived certainty of punishment for both offenses; (3) Peer offending produced decreases in the perceived certainty for stealing, but not for attacking; (4) Prior offending experience did not diminish the influence of more immediate offending experience on risk perceptions; and (5) Moral inhibition reduced the effects of offending experience on risk perceptions. The implications are discussed for refining theories of offender decision-making.Greg Pogarsky is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany. His research focuses on refining models of offender decision-making by revisiting their assumptions about human nature and by appealing to recent advancements on human decision-making in economics and psychology. KiDeuk Kim is a doctoral student in the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany. His current research interests include rational choice theories, perceptions in the criminal justice system, and quantitative methodology. Ray Paternoster is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Maryland. His research interests include criminological theory, quantitative methods in criminology, and the death penalty. Correspondence to:

Criminal Deterrence: A Review of the Literature

“…In response to this concern, a more recent literature uses panel data to measure "updating"-the idea that individuals change their prior risk perceptions on the basis of whether or not they are apprehended in an earlier period. This literature has also tended to find robust evidence that risk perceptions are sensitive to actual experience (Pogarsky, Piquero, and Paternoster 2004;Pogarsky, Kim, and Paternoster 2005;Matsueda, Kreager, and Huizinga 2006;and Anwar and Loughran 2011). Several more specific findings from this literature are worth noting.…”

Deterrence: A Review of the Evidence by a Criminologist for Economists

“…Concerning the first prediction, a long list of studies find that increases (decreases) in perceived apprehension risk are associated with the failure (success) in avoiding apprehension (Pogarsky, Kim et al 2005), (Matsueda, Kreager et al 2006), (Lochner 2007), (Hjalmarsson 2008), (Anwar and Loughran 2009).…”

Beyond Legal Sanctions: The Correlates of Self-imposed and Socially Imposed Extralegal Risk Perceptions

“…Note that the analysis does not directly model respondents' and friends' unpunished offending experiences. Still, by controlling for punishment in each model, offending experiences approximate unpunished offending experiences; essentially, the punishment measure controls for offending experiences that result in punishment, and the offending measure captures the remaining offending experiences that do not (Pogarsky et al 2005). Thus, in Models 1 and 3, respondents' (unpunished) drinking and driving is negatively and significantly associated with both guilt and social disapproval.…”

“…Initially, individuals form perceptions about the risks of committing crimes; subsequently, these sanction risk perceptions influence the decision to engage in or refrain from criminal conduct (Pogarsky, Kim, and Paternoster 2005). Deterrence research has been concerned primarily with the latter stage, the effects of sanction risk perceptions on behavior, rather than with the former, the formation of these sanction risk perceptions.…”