Theory Flashcards
1
Q
Spiritual Criminology
A
- early 18th century (middle ages)
- St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
- Aquinas said that a God-given “natural law” was revealed by observing, through the eyes of faith, people’s natural tendency to do good rather than evil
- criminal law based on this natural law
- Crime is a sin caused by evil spirits/devil
- Religious approach to understanding of crime
- Crime is a sin against God, King, and the ruling class
- crime was mostly a private affair where victims’ families took revenge on offenders’ family
- Punishment system based on private vengenance (ex: blood fueds, trials by battle, trials by ordeals (dunking, burning at stake)
- if you were evil, you deserved the punishment and punishment purified the soul
- religion was justification for punishment
- state utilized torture to punish sins on absolute moral authority of Natural Law
- Spiritual explanations of crime appeared in the “New World” in Puritan colony in MA (crime thought to have been caused by devil/witches)
- Quakers used this within punishment in 1790 by isolating offenders in cells with only a bible
2
Q
Classical Criminology
A
- mid 18th century-mid 19th century
Rational choice approach to study of crime - Crime is anything prohibited by law
- Punishment system based on swift, certain, severe, proportionate penalties
- Colonial America built on this school
- Three strands of theory and research:
1. “rational choice perspective” (policy: focus on changing situations in order to influence people’s calculations)
2. deterrent effect of criminal justice policies
3. routine activities (policy: limiting criminal opportunities rather than increasing deterrent effect)
3
Q
Hobbes
A
- 1588-1678
- “social contract thinkers”
- focused on naturalistic arguments
- argued that people naturally pursue their own interests
- people agree to give up selfish behavior as long as everyone else does the same (i.e., social contract”)
- state needs to act as enforcement mechanism for social contract
- everyone who agrees to social contract agrees to state being enforcement mechanism
4
Q
Social Contract Thinkers
A
- Locke
- Montesquieu
- Voltaire
- Rousseau
- by mid 1700s (before Beccaria), naturalistic approach was well known and accpeted by intellectuals, but not by ruling groups
5
Q
Beccaria Background
A
- Italian jurist, philosopher, politician
- mediocre, indifferent student from aristocratic family
- part of Young social movement
- “academy of fits”- literary society of Italian intelligentsia
- informal version of grad scool
- people who did not have to work got together to debate and thought they could change society by giving each other trasks to identity primary arguments against X or Y
- Beccaria was assigned to bullet point arguyments against “barbaric” system of justice
- anonymously published in Milan in 1764 when Beccaria was 26
- book served as guide for French code and US constitution
6
Q
Philosophical Pillars of “On Crimes and Puinshment”
A
- human nature (voltaire): free will, hedonistic self-interest, rationally calculating
- fatalism v free will
- Utilitarianism (Betham/Mill): greatest pleasure to the greatest number
- Social contract (Hobbes/Locke): Secular view of formation of Law and Society:
1. Secular explanation of the formation of the political state; Mitigates purely utilitarian arguments
2. Utilitarianism works as a principle, only when it does not violate social contract
7
Q
Principles of “On Crimes and Punishment”
A
- legislatures should define crimes and specific punishment for each crime
- judges should determine guilt and then follow law when sentencing (judges should not have any discretion)
- seriousness of crime is determined by harm to society (intent does not matter)
- purpose of punishment is to deter crime (punishment should be proportionate)
- punishments are unjust when severity exceeds deterrence
- excessive severity increases crime
- punishments should be swift
- punishments should be certain
- laws should be published and where everyone can understand them
- punishment should be based on the act not the person
8
Q
Gibbs (1968)
A
- first empirical test of Beccari’s theory of deterrence
- defined certainty of punishment as ratio between number of admissions to state prisons for given crime to number of those crimes known to police in that year
- found greater certainty and severity of imprisonment associated with fewer homicides in 50 states in 1960s
- effect of certainty twice as great as effect of severity
9
Q
Tittle (1969)
A
- examined effect of certainty and severity on seven index offenses in FBI UCR
- Found certainty associated with less crime for all 7
- more severity was associated with higher crime for all offenses except homicide
- Conclusions: certainty deters crime, but severity only deters crime when certainty is high
10
Q
Chiricos & Waldo (1970)
A
- Tittle’s results could be explained by variations in police record keeping
- Some police may deal with certain crimes informally without making report, which would influence crime rates
11
Q
Glaser & Zeigler (1974)
A
- argued against Gibb’s conclusion that increased imprisonment deters homicide
- showed that death penalty states have higher murder rates, but murderers in death penalty cases who are not executed serve shorter prison sentences than those in non-death penalty states
- argued that it is unlikely that longer prison sentences deter crime but death penalty does not
- attributed higher murder rates, use of death penalty, and shorter prison stays for murderers not executed to a lower valuation of human life in those states
12
Q
Pratt & Turanovic (2018)’s thoughts on celerity
A
Celerity only matters if detection and response are immediate
13
Q
Specific Deterrence
A
One’s punishment for a prior wrongdoing deters them from committing future offenses (Andenaes, 1974)
14
Q
General Deterrence
A
relates to the threat of punishment; seeing other people be punished prevents a potential offender from offending.(Andenaes, 1974)
15
Q
Matsueda et al. (2006): Deterring delinquents: A rational choice model of theft and violence
A
- analyze relationship between perceived certainty of arrest and delinquency
- found that perceptions of certainty of arrest were related to self-reported theft and violence
- those who perceived there were opportunities to commit theft and vioelnce and get away with it were more likley to report both acts
- anticipated gains and benefits of crime were influencial: those who perceived theft/violence as “exciting” or “cool” were more likely to report those acts
- relative effects of the costs and rewards of crime were roughly comparable in magnitude (even though costs would be delayed)
16
Q
Piliavin et al. (1986): Crime, deterrence, and rational choice
A
- found evidence for reward component but not cost or deterrence component (as measured by percieved risks of formal sanctions)
17
Q
Williams & Hawkins (1986): Perceptual research on general deterrence: A critical review
A
- reconceptualized general deterrence with an emphasis being on the idenfitication of the direct and indirect consequences of legal sanctions that promote deterrence
18
Q
Stafford & Warr’s (1993) reconceptualization of deterrence
A
- Stated that general and specific deterrence should not be separated because they operate together and “people are likely to have a mixture of indirect and direct experience with punishment and punishment avoidance)
- Argue that general deterrence refers to indirect experience with punishment and punishment avoidance, whereas specific deterrence refers to direct experience with punishment and punishment avoidance
- Punishment avoidance suggests that potential offenders actively manipulate the risks of punishments by trying to avoid getting caught
19
Q
Durlauf & Nagin (2011): Imprisonment and crime: Can both be reduced?
A
- Argued that both imprisonment and crime can be reduced if policymakers shift focus from severity-based policies (i.e., mandating length prison terms) to more effective use of police to make risks of crime clearer and punishment faster and more certain
20
Q
Weisburd, Einat, & Kowlaski (2008): The miracle of the cells: An experimental study of interventions to increase payment of court-ordered financial obligations
A
- study of deterrence
- Project MUSTER
- deterrence based program, with threats of violation to court and incarceration and community service
- probationers sentenced to project MUSTER were significantly more likley to pay fines than TAU
- probationers who just had violation of probation had similar findings to MUSTER, indicating the threat of possible incarceration had a deterrence effect
21
Q
Hawken & Kleiman (2009): Managing drug involved probationers with swift and certain sanctions: Evaluating Hawaii’s HOPE
A
- Deterrence based intervention
- Designed to reduce positive drug tests, arrests and imprisonment
- Administered short-but certain periods of lockup for failed drug tests and other probation violates
- Was not able to be replicated
22
Q
Nagin’s 2013 review of deterrence four categories
A
- Four categories: imprisonment, policing, capital punishment, and perceptual deterrence
23
Q
Nagin’s 2013 review of deterrence effect of imprisonment
A
- two methodologies: cross-sectional (i.e., are levels of imprisonment in different jurisdisctions causally associated with different levels of criminal behavior?) and longitudinal (do changes in imprisonment over time result in changes in criminal behavior?)
- evidence for deterrent effect
- imprisonment decreased failure to pay fines, success of Project HOPE, after three stikes law in CA, reduction of arrests for offenders with two previous strikes
24
Q
Helland & Tabarrok (2007): Does Three Strikes Deter?
A Nonparametric Estimation
A
- compare post-sentencing activity of offenders convicted of strikeable offense to those tried for strikeable offense but convivcted of nonstrikeable offenses
- robustness check: comparison with states without three stike laws
- findings: CA’s three strike laws significantly reduces felony arrest tates among class of criminals with two strikes by 17-20%
25
Nagin's two ways of police deterrence
1. overall size of police staffing levels
2. policing strategies (i.e., hotspots, problem-oriented policing, Operation Ceasefire)
* 3. Police strength (Manpower) has been show to deter crime to some extent
26
Ehrlich (1975): The deterrent effect of capital punishment: A question of life and death
* argues that every execution prevents 7-8 homicides
* 1978: National Academy of Science (Blumstein, Cohen, and Nagin) conclude there is no evidence of this
* 2012: National Academy of Science (Nagin & Pepper): "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"
* Why they cannot determine effect:
1. * small portion of homicides are eligible for death penalty and of those, few results in execution
2. studies are not able to demonstrate that would-be murderers perceive they may be caught, sentenced to death, and executed
3. certain assumptions of statistical models employed by such research are not defendable
27
Geerken & Gove (1975): Deterrence: some theoretical considerations
* Theory of perceptual deterrence
* both formal sanction messages or information and informal messages (i.e., from media and people) should affect perceived formal and informal sanctions, which should in turn impact decisions to commit crimes
28
Paternoster (2018): Perceptual deterrence theory
Concluded:
1. there is still not much knowledge about how perceptions of sanction threats are intially formed
2. people do update their perceptions based on new information
3. perceived severity of punishment has little to no effect on criminal behavior
4. perceived certainty of punishment does have some effect on behavior, especially when formal sanctions bring about informal sanctions
29
Nagin (2013) findings on accuracy of punishment
* dated general population surveys
* only a small proportion of public (but majority of incarcerated offenders) could correctly identify maximum penalties for various offense types
* generally able to rank order severity of punishment across offenses
30
Pogarsky & Piquero (2003): Can punishment encourage offending: Investigating the "resetting" effect
* "resetting effect" offenders lower their perceived certainty of punishment after they are actually punished on the logic that once you have been caught, you are less likely to be subsequently caught
* effect occurs with low-rate offenders but not with high-rate offenders
* occurs because chronic, experienced offenders do not consider certainty in their deciison-making
31
Mulvey (2011): Highlights from pathways to desistance: A longitudinal study of serious adolescent offenders
* Less experienced offenders: being arrested increases subjective probabilities of apprehension and they base their perceptions of risk more on their current arrest ratio than their prior subjective pribabiltiies
* more experienced offenders: place more weight on prior perceptions
32
Kaiser et al. (2022) : Revisiting the experiential effect: How criminal offending affects juveniles' perceptions of detection risk
* German adolescents
* inexperiences juveniles who overestimated the risk would reduce perceptions of risk as they committed crimes with no consequences
* if they ceased committing crimes, they returned to their initial risk perceptions
* "Ephemerality effect"
33
Nagin's two important things to remember about deterrence
* punishment itself may actually increase one's behavior
* it can be difficult to separate incapacitation effects from deterrence effects
34
Gibbs (1975): Crime, punishment, and deterrence
* argued that since the celerity argument may be presumed to be based on Pavlovian conditioning where even a minimal delay debetween stimulus and response prevents learning, its relavance to the CJS is virtually nill
* argued that delay in punishment may even strengthen ite effectiveness because people come to dread the delay itself
35
Loughran et al. (2016) summary of evidence on deterrence hypotheses
* inverse but modest relationship between perceived certainty of punichment and offending
* severity: inconsistent and supportive evidence has been weak
* celerity: not very well studied because it is hard to operationalize
36
Wright et al. (2004): Does the Perceived Risk of Punishment Deter Criminally Prone Individuals? Rational Choice, Self-Control, and Crime
* asked adolescents/young adults about perceptions of the risk of getting caught for seven offenses, risk of informal sanctions, and self-reported involvement
* significant inverse relationship between perceived risk of getting caught and self reported variety and frequency of offending
* deterrence effect was particulary pronounces for those with highest criminal propensity
* no deterrent effect for those with lowest levels of criminal propensity (argued that they may be immune to sanction threats becuase they do not contemplate offending)
37
Lochner, L. (2007). Individual perceptions of the criminal justice system.
* nationally representative samples (NLSY97 and NYS)
* perceived probability of arrest was significantly and inversely related to self-reported theft (auto and minor) and attacking somewone
* effects were modest
38
Loughran et al. (2012): Re-Examining the Functional Form of the Certainty Effect in Deterrence Theory
* Pathways to Desistance data
* significant inverse effect between perceived sanction certainty and self-reported offending, but only at certain levels of certainty
* followed previous research that indicate there may be a "tipping point" for certainty to make a differnece
39
Nagin & Poharsky (2001): Integrating celerity, impulsivity, and extralegal sanction threats into a model of general deterrence: Theory and evidence.
* U(Benefits) > p U(Legal Costs + Extralegal Costs)
* benefits: both the direct gains and indirect gains
* legal costs : formal sanction threat certainty and severity
* Extralegal costs: possibility of informal sanctions
* p: perceived probability of each outcome
* does include a discount factor to reflect delay of costs while benefits are immediate
* examined hypothestical scenario involving drinking and driving
* found evidence for both certainty and severity effect for perceived sanction threats, but statistically insignificant effect for celerity
* magnitude of certainty effect was greater than severity
* deterrent effect of extralegel sanctions was at least as large as that for legal sanctions
40
Pogarsky, G. (2002). Identifying deterrable offenders: Implications for deterrence research.
* also looked at drinking and driving
* also found percieved certainty and severity of punishment to have effect on self-reported intentions to drink and drive
* found informal sanctions to have an even stronger inhibiting effect than formal sanction threats
* three groups based on how "deterrable" they were:
1. * "acute conformists": not drink or drive even if probability of getting caught was nil
2. "deterrable" respondents: they would drink and drive but probability would be reduced by threat of punishment
3. "incorrigible" respondents: impervious to threat of sanctions; more likely to drink and drive in the face of punishment
* Contraty to Wright et al. (2002), found deterrence worls best in mid-range of criminal propensity
41
Nagin, D.S., & Pogarsky, G. (2003). An experimental investigation of deterrence: Cheating, self‐serving bias, and impulsivity.
* experiment of college students
* cheating on a trivia quiz with answers on the back and $10 bonus if you get at least 6 questions correct
* two groups: high certainty with monitor in room, low certainty with monitor not in room
* high-severity: students told if caught cheating, all money would be taken
* significantly greater proportion of students in low-certainty condition recieved bonus
* severity had no effect not did interaction between certainty and severity
42
Loughran, T., Paternoster, R., & Thomas, K. (2014). Incentivizing responses to self‐report questions in perceptual deterrence studies: An investigation of the validity of deterrence
theory using Bayesian truth serum.
* presented college students with scenario involving drinking and driving in three different conditions (pen and paper with no incentives, regular computer lab with incentives for honesty and accuracy, computer lab with Bayesian Truth Serum with incentives)
* BTS encourages truth telling by incentivizung truth based on probabilities
* found that the elicitation of subjective probability estimates of sanction threat risks and self-reported involvement in acts are two areas where respondents may be disinclined or unable to recall information accurately and thoughtfully
* people in BTS group: spent more time completing instrument, lower perceived risk of arrests than no incentives, lower perceived certainty than computer lab with incentives
* non-incentive group: higher correlation between perceived certainty and self reported intentions to offend than under BTS condition
* Considerations: 1. pay more attention to advantage of incentivized scoring rules in survey research; 2. suggest correlation between perceived certainty and offending in previous research may be exaggerated
43
Andenaes, J. (1974). Punishment and Deterrence. Findings on deterrence of policing
* looked a crime rates after entire Danish police forse was arrested by occupying German forces in World War II
* Greatest increases were observed for street crime that would most likely be deterred by police presence
44
Sherman, L.W., & Eck, J.E. (2002). Policing for prevention
* identify five other studies looking at the effect of police srteiks on crime
* 4 of the studies found large increases of crime during police strikes
* weak research designs
* looks at absolute deterrent effect of police (i.e., going from full police force to no police force)
45
Eck & Maguire. (2005). Have Changes in Policing Reduced Violent Crime? An assessment of the evidence
* much of the research looking at effect of policing on crime rates is correlation and fails to adequetaly contrl for the simultaneity problem (the relationship between the police and crime rates can go two ways: either increase in hiring decrease offending because of deterrence or increase in crime leads to increased hiring)
46
Di Tella & Schargrodsky (2004). Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces After a Terrorist Attack
* used natural experiment to solve the simultaneity problem
* analyzed rates of auto theft after police presence increased in certain areas due a terrorist attack on a Jewish center in Argentina
* rates of auto theft decreased by 75% within local blocks within increased police presence
47
Donohue & Ho. (2005). Does Terrorism Increase Crime? A Cautionary Tale
* Said findings from di tella and Schargrodsky's 2004 paper could have been because of displacement
48
Klick & Tabarrok (2005). Klick, Jonathan, and Alexander Tabarrok. "Using terror alert levels to estimate the effect of police on crime
* natural experiment
* influence of increased police presence in DC after increased terror alert
* 7% drop in police daily crime reports, limited to property crimes
49
Marvell & Moody (1996)
* panel design
* Granger causal model
* estimated relationship between number of officers per capita and felony crime rates in states and cities
* significant inverse relationship between officers per capita and homicide, robbery, and burglary
50
Levitt (1997). Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime
* used instrumental variable to address simultaneity problem
* relationship between police officers per capita and felony crime rates using election cycles as instrument
* police officers increase on election years because politicians want city to have low crime rates or appear tough on crime
* evidence of deterrent effect, with increase in policing leading to 5-8% reduction across different crime types
* McCrary (2002) pointed out two errors, which when corrected lead to nonsignificance
* In 2002, Leviit proposed the use of an alternative instrument (number of firefighters per capita) had significant findings
51
Evans & Owens (2007). COPS and crime
* used funding for COPS as instrument for effect size of police force on crime rates
* additional officers related to decrease in crime, strongest effects for property crime
52
Neoclassical School
* difficulty in applying Code of 1791 because it did not address individual differences based on Beccaria
* Codes of 1810 and then Revised French Code of 1819 allowed more discretion to judges
* continued idea of rational choice
* primarily represented idea of injustice of a rigorous code and the need for individualization and judgement to fit invididual characteristics (i.e., age, mental conditions, extenuating circumstances, etc)
* more about difference in administration of criminal justice
* major model in advances industrial societies
53
Positivist Criminology
* mid 19th century-late 20th century
* Crime is influenced by larger societal influence
* Crime is results of internal and external social forces
* Empirical approach to the study of crime
* Punishment system based on treatment
54
Early Positivism
* Guerry (1829)
* French lawyer/statistician
* "moral statistics"- crime is results of place (not personal risk/benefit)
* Quetelet (1831)
* Belgian mathematician
* “Social mechanics”= crime tied to age, gender, climate geography
* Not because of cost benefit analysis
* “society prepares the crime and the guilty are only instruments by which it is executed”
* We should not punish the individual, we should change the society/ external forces
