DETERRENCE THEORY
Severity and fitting the punishment to the crime
The basic premise in classical criminology is that actions are taken and decisions are made by
persons in the rationale exercise of free will. All individuals choose to obey or violate the law by
a rationale calculation of the risk of pain versus potential pleasure derived from an act. In
contemplating a criminal act, they take into account the probable legal penalties and the
likelihood that they will be caught. If they believe that the legal penalty threatens more pain than
the probable gain produced by the crime, then they will not commit the crime. Their calculation
is based on their own experience with criminal punishment, their knowledge of what punishment
is imposed by law and their awareness of what punishment has been given to apprehend
offenders in the past.
A legal system that is capricious/unpredictable and uncertain does not guarantee sufficient
grounds for making such rationale decisions. Such a system is not only unjust; it is also
ineffective in controlling crime. To prevent crime, therefore, criminal law must provide
reasonable penalties that are applied in a reasonable fashion to encourage citizens to obey rather
than violate the law. The primary purpose of criminal law is deterrence. It should not be used
simply to avenge the wrongs done to the state or the victim. Laws should be enacted that clearly
define what is unlawful, prescribe punishment for law violation sufficient enough to offset the
gain from crime, and thereby deter criminal acts by citizens.
Certainty and celerity of punishment
The deterrence doctrine does not rest on the severity of legal penalties alone. It further
determines that, to deter, punishment for crime must be swift and certain. Celerity refers to the
swiftness with which criminal sanctions are applied after the commission of crime. The more
immediately after the commission of a crime a punishment is inflicted, the more just and useful it
will be. An immediate punishment is more useful because the smaller the interval of time
between the punishment and the crime, the stronger and more lasting will the association of the
two ideas of crime and punishment.
Certainty refers to the probability of apprehension and punishment for crime. If the punishment
for a crime is severe, certain and swift, the citizenry will rationally calculate that more is to be
lost than gained from crime and will be deterred from violating the law. Certainty is more
effective in deterring crime than severity of punishment. The more severe the punishment, the
less likely it is to be applied and the less certain the punishment, the more severe it must be to
deter crime.
There are two ways by which deterrence is intended to operate. First, apprehended and punished
offenders will refrain from repeating crimes if they are certainly caught and severely punished.
This is known as “specific deterrence” or “special deterrence”. Second is general deterrence in
which the state punishment of offenders serves as an example to those in the general public who
have not yet committed a crime, instilling in them enough fear of state punishment to deter them
from crime.
Objective measures of deterrence
Deterrence research measures the severity and certainty of criminal penalties in two ways. The
first approach is to use objective indicators from official criminal justice statistics. The certainty
or risk of penalty, for instance, is measured by the arrest rate (the ratio of arrests to crimes known
to the police) or by the maximum sentence provided by law for an offense, by the average length
of sentence for a particular crime or by the proportion of convicted offenders sentenced to prison
rather than to probation or some other non-incarceration program. Deterrence theory predicts an
inverse or negative relationship between these official measures of legal penalties and the official
crime rate measured by crimes known to the police. When the objective certainty and severity of
criminal sanctions are high, according to the theory, official crime rates should be low.
Perceptual measures of deterrence
The second approach is to measure individual’s subjective perceptions of legal penalties. The
objective threat of legal punishment means nothing if citizens are not aware of the official
sanctions or do not believe that there is any high risk of penalty if they were to commit a crime.
There is evidence that one’s perception of risk for violations is influenced somewhat by
information regarding the objective certainty of sanction. Most people however have a very
limited knowledge of what the legal penalties actually are and often make very inaccurate
estimations of the true odds of apprehension and incarceration. But a person’s fear of punishment
should have a deterrent effect on his or her decision to violate the law, even if that fear has no
connection with objective reality. Ultimately deterrence theory proposes that it is what people
believe about the certainty, severity and swiftness of punishment regardless of its true risks that
determines their choice of conformity or crime.
