Thesis on Deterrence Theory: General and Specific
Introduction
Deterrence is the omission of legally proscribed acts; hence by this omission one may be abiding by the prescribed law. It is important to distinguish between deterrence and punishment avoidance. While the former has been defined, the later, punishment avoidance happens when there has been commission of a crime but the perpetrator was not punished. This paper shall discuss and present a thesis on deterrence theory.
General deterrence relates to the effects to the public at large/potential criminals to the legal punishment of criminals. For members of the public, general deterrence, the experience with legal punishment is indirect i.e. observing the punishment of the others that deters the public. General deterrence has also been defined as imposing sanctions on the offender in order to show to the members of the public the cost implication of engaging in crime, in result discouraging criminal activities among the general public.
Specific deterrence refers to the effects of legal punishment on the sufferers of that punishment (punished criminals). Specific deterrence is more of a personal experience since it is directly to the punished offender. This is also when a person is deterred by the actual experience of legal punishment. Both general and specific deterrence acknowledges certain kind of interaction with legal punishment so as to deter persons from engaging in criminal activities (Ferries, T. n.d).
Shortcomings of Conventional Specific and General Deterrence Concept
The conventional distinction between specific and general deterrence has challenges that shall be discussed in this paper. Specific deterrence concept assumes that the future behavior of an offender is determined only by the offender’s direct experience with legal punishment. It ignores other variable that may influence the offenders’ behavior. As a matter of fact, the efficacy of deterrence is usually determined by the knowledge of similar severity and certainty of punishment. Members of the public and punished offenders are likely to have a mixture of both indirect and direct experience with punishment and punishment avoidance. Moreover, offenders are mostly engaged in more than one type of criminal activity, and they may or may not suffer legal punishment for each type of crime (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993).
On the other hand, General deterrence in its concept fails to recognize that there are two types of persons whom have never experienced legal punishment. They are: persons who have never committed any crimes, and persons who have committed crimes but have avoided punishment. Only the first type of persons can be said to have not experienced direct legal punishment. The second person may have not experienced legal punishment, but has acquired experience by avoiding punishment, which increases the chances of committing the crimes again.
Avoiding punishment after committing a crime provides minimal information of the legal consequences of being caught, thus it affect strongly the perception of certainty of punishment avoidance. It is likely that punishment avoidance encourages crime than punishment does to discourage it. Therefore, what is taken to be general deterrence is not strictly limited to persons lacking direct experience with legal punishment. In cases of crime, offenders will always experience punishment or punishment avoidance, and it is wrong to make arguments that only former affects/determine subsequent conduct. Subsequently, the common distinction between specific and general deterrence focuses more on the nature of prior experience with legal punishment than on the recognition of the presence of such experience (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993).
Experience with Punishment: Direct and Indirect
Specific deterrence studies searches for repetition or avoidance of offences by the punished offender for evidence of deterrence. However, this procedure is wrong, since researchers commonly take it that the only operative variable when it comes to predicting future behavior is that offender's direct experience with suffering a punishment. Moreover, to ignore the offenders experience punishment avoidance, ignores possibility that one may suffer a legal punishment while at that time they had (indirect experience with punishment) knowledge of such punishment from the experience of others (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993).
For instance, supposing a person is caught pick-pocketing and he/she is fined and this is his/her first offense. The direct experience of being fined is likely to be salient, but its efficacy of deterrent will be determined on whether the individual believes that other persons have a similar severity and certainty of punishment. It is also dependent or whether they believe that in this particular instance the punishment was unfortunate and that others would have walked away unpunished of the crime, or that they would have been given a less or more severe punishment.
Basically, punished offenders or members of the general public people are likely to have a mixture of indirect and direct experience with punishment and punishment avoidance. An example is persons who are taken to jail for nonpayment often hear or meet others jailed for the same offense thus, such persons gain both direct and indirect experience with legal punishment.
However, by adopting the conventional distinction between specific and general deterrence, researchers perpetuate the concept that the two forms of deterrence occur among distinct populations. The problem with such a notion is clear when one considers that criminals often commit more than one type of crime, and that they may or may not suffer a legal punishment for each type that they commit (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993).
Suppose a person is punished after being caught committing their first burglary, but previously has also committed other crimes which they avoided punishment. Claiming that in predicting the offender's future behavior the direct experience of being punished for the burglary is the only relevant consideration, is to ignore the potential effects of indirect experience with punishment and the potential effects of punishment avoidance.
For the burglary, the direct experience with punishment could reduce the offender's chance of involving again in the other crimes i.e. by increasing the perceived certainty of punishment for these offenses. However, it could also work in the reverse; the direct experience of getting away with the other crimes could increase the chances of committing further burglaries. Considering indirect experience with punishment and punishment avoidance, for all of the offenses there are still other possibilities. Example, the arrest of fellow offenders for similar criminal activity may lead to the belief that the odds of arrest may have increased substantially.
An underlying assumption in both possibilities is that people may estimate the certainty and severity of punishment for a particular type of crime by reference to similar types of offenses or crimes in general rather than from information that is specific that particular crime. Therefore, a mixture of direct and indirect experiences with punishment avoidance and legal punishment will be a determinant for most persons. Even with estimates of severity and certainty only from specific crime information, a mixture of punishment experiences is likely to be relevant (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993).
A New Deterrence Theory
The pitfalls of distinguishing between general and specific deterrence is mainly by focusing on distinct population, punished offenders and the general public. However, a proper distinction should focus strictly on contrasting kinds of experience with legal punishment. As deterrence is defined to mean the curtailment of fear of legal punishment, therefore general deterrence relates to the deterrent effects of indirect experience with punishment avoidance and legal punishment. Specific deterrent relates to the deterrent effect of direct experience with punishment and punishment avoidance.
The new advanced theory has several positive focuses over the present deterrence theory. Firstly, it recognizes the possibility that both specific and general deterrence can operate for any given person or in any population. Secondly, it treats punishment avoidance as analytically distinct from the experience of suffering a punishment. Thirdly, it is compatible with contemporary learning theory, particularly the distinction between vicarious/observational learning and experiential learning (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993).
The underlying presumption of the new advanced deterrent theory is that the rate of crime in virtually any population will be a function of both general and specific deterrence. This is not suggesting that the two types of deterrence will be equally important from one population to another. Among persons with limited direct experience with punishment avoidance and/or legal punishment, the rate of crime is more likely to be a function of general deterrence (indirect experience with punishment avoidance and legal punishment). In the special case of persons who have no direct experience with punishment or punishment avoidance, those who have never committed any crimes at all, the only possibly relevant consideration is general deterrence.
However, among persons who have been punished many times and/or have avoided punishment repeatedly, their criminal behavior should be largely a function of specific deterrence (direct experience with punishment and punishment avoidance). The implication is that individuals can be viewed as falling along a continuum characterized by general deterrence extreme and specific deterrence at the other extreme (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993).
Application of the New Deterrence Theory
Criticism by the new advanced deterrence theory is that deterrence studies may have reversed the causal ordering of key variables. Although deterrence researchers treat criminal behavior as a consequence of the perceived certainty of legal punishment, it is possible that criminal behavior may be the cause of such perceptions.
Negative associations between the perceived certainty of legal punishment and crime may simply reflect the fact that most instances of rule breaking go undetected and that participants in crime eventually lower their initially unrealistically high estimates of the risks involved. The effects of criminal behavior on perceptions of the certainty of punishment are referred to as experiential effects to distinguish them from the reverse process deterrence (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993).
The concept of experiential effects is consistent with what has been said about the possible effects of punishment avoidance. However, there are several challenges with the concept and evidence for experiential effects. Research that report stronger experiential than deterrent effects tend to focus on minor crimes such as petty crimes and drug use. Considering the high incidence and low objective actual certainty of punishment for these crimes, criminals are likely to have considerable direct experience with punishment avoidance, which is what proponents of experiential effects contend. However, for non frequent offenders who have no or little direct experience with punishment avoidance; a situation that is more likely to illustrate serious as opposed to minor crimes (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993).
For example, a person who has committed one murder, and has avoided legal punishment, be expected to substantially lower his or her perception of the severity and certainty of punishment for that crime. Nevertheless, this is likely to depend on the offenders’ indirect experience with punishment and punishment avoidance. If others also are perceived as having committed the crime with impunity, then there might be a substantial reduction in the person's perceived certainty of punishment for murder. However, in the opposite and more likely case where others are believed to have a high certainty of punishment there should be little experiential effect (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993).
The advanced new deterrence theory suggests that it is unnecessary to formulate separate theories of general and specific deterrence. Rather, one possible theory centers on indirect experience with punishment avoidance and legal punishment, and direct experience with punishment avoidance and legal punishment. Recognizing that people may think of punishment for crimes in general rather than in crime-specific terms, such a theory would need to consider indirect and direct experience with punishment and punishment avoidance for crimes other than those that individuals actually have committed (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993).
Unfortunately, when the advanced deterrence theory is adopted, tests of the deterrence doctrine will become complex. For instance, research based on survey data would need to include, measures of (Stafford, & Warr, 1 May 1993):
- Self-reported criminal behavior, including self-reports of direct experience with punishment and punishment avoidance, and
- Persons' perceptions of their own severity and certainty of legal punishment for offences,
- Estimates of peers' criminal behavior, including their experiences with punishment avoidance and legal punishment,
- Persons' perceptions of the severity and certainty of legal punishment for others (presumably those within their immediate social network)
An experimental design might facilitate an assessment of the separate effects of indirect and direct experience with legal punishment and punishment avoidance on crime. However, only a very complex experimental design can facilitate an examination of the relative effects of indirect and direct experience with punishment and punishment avoidance, which may be the more important issue as far as a deterrent theory is concerned.
References
Ferries, T. (n.d) .Deterrence As an Objective to Sentencing. Retrieved from http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/S/SpecificDeterrence.aspx
Stafford, M. C. & Warr, M. (1 May 1993) A Reconceptualization of General and Specific Deterrence. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 30(2), 123-135. doi: 10.1177/0022427893030002001 or http://jrc.sagepub.com/content/30/2/123.full.pdf+html
