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DETERRENCE AND DETERRABILITY*

BRUCE A. JACOBS
School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences
University of Texas at Dallas

KEYWORDS: deterrence, deterrability, offender decision making

The first forays into Western criminological theory came in the lan-
guage of deterrence (Beccaria, 1963 [1764]). The paradigm itself is sim-
ple and straightforward, offering an explanation for crime that doubles
as a solution (Pratt et al., 2006). Crime occurs when the expected
rewards outweigh the anticipated risks, so increasing the risks, at least
theoretically, will prevent most crimes in most circumstances. If deter-
rence describes the perceptual process by which would-be offenders
calculate risks and rewards prior to offending, then deterrability refers
to the offender’s capacity and/or willingness to perform this calculation.
The distinction between deterrence and deterrability is critical to under-
standing criminality from a utilitarian perspective. However, by
attempting to answer “big picture” questions about the likelihood of
offending relative to sanction threats, precious little scholarship has
attended to the situated meaning of deterrability. This article draws
attention to this lacuna in hopes of sensitizing criminology to an area of
inquiry that, at present, remains only loosely developed.

The first forays into Western criminological theory came in the language
of deterrence (Beccaria, 1963 [1764]). The paradigm itself is simple and
straightforward, offering an explanation for crime that doubles as a solu-
tion (Pratt et al., 2006). Crime occurs when the expected rewards outweigh
the anticipated risks, so increasing the risks, at least theoretically, will pre-
vent most crimes in most circumstances.
If deterrence describes the perceptual process by which would-be
offenders calculate risks and rewards prior to offending, then deterrability
refers to the offender’s capacity and/or willingness to perform this calcula-
tion. The distinction between deterrence and deterrability is critical to
understanding criminality from a utilitarian perspective. However, by

* Direct correspondence to Bruce A. Jacobs, School of Economic, Political and

Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, GR 31, Richardson, TX 75083 (e-
mail: bruce.jacobs@utdallas.edu).

 2010 American Society of Criminology

CRIMINOLOGY VOLUME 48 NUMBER 2 2010 417
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418 JACOBS

attempting to answer “big picture” questions about the likelihood of

offending relative to sanction threats, precious little scholarship has
attended to the situated meaning of deterrability. This article draws atten-
tion to this lacuna in hopes of sensitizing criminology to an area of inquiry
that, at present, remains only loosely developed.
The article proceeds in the following ways. First, it outlines what deter-
rence is and how it typically has been conceptualized and measured. Sec-
ond, it explores the distinction between deterrence and deterrability and
why criminal commitment, by itself, cannot be an adequate basis for
assessing deterrability. Third, it introduces the concept of risk sensitivity as
a relevant precondition for establishing deterrability. Fourth, it provides
vignettes of risk-sensitive and risk-insensitive conduct to illustrate deter-
rable and undeterrable offenders in real-life settings and circumstances.
Fifth, it catalogs the various and sundry situational variables that research-
ers can examine retrospectively to assess whether and to what extent risk
sensitivity exists in discrete offenses; this exercise permits the identifica-
tion of viable candidates for situational crime prevention—the most con-
crete and direct expression of deterrence. Sixth, it distinguishes between
deterrence and prevention to show why individual traits such as crime pro-
pensity (i.e., self control) are not, in and of themselves, sufficient for
assessing deterrability. Finally, it explores risk sensitivity as a dependent
variable and discusses factors that mediate its strength and direction.

DETERRENCE

Deterrence denotes a perceptual process by which would-be offenders

calculate the costs of offending relative to the anticipated gains before
deciding to offend. As Decker, Wright, and Logie (1993: 135) observed,
“There can be no direct relationship between sanctions and criminal
action; the two must be linked through the intervening variable of subjec-
tive perceptions of the risks and rewards of committing an offense.”
Deterrence research is quantitative, qualitative, and experimental, but
each design, at its core, is trying to ascertain whether offending is sensitive
to changes in perceived sanction threats. Measurement is done at different
levels of aggregation, using different outcome measures and sampling
designs, but the objective inevitably is to determine whether and to what
extent sanction threats reduce crime (Kleck et al., 2005).
Ecological models generally compare rates of offending before and after
the implementation of sanctions to gauge the power and direction of
changes in crime. Interrupted time series assess whether discrete crime
prevention interventions work—such as crackdowns on illegal drug mar-
kets (Sherman, 1990), road closures intended to inhibit gang homicides
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DETERRENCE AND DETERRABILITY 419

(Lasley, 1996), or security measures to thwart business robberies (Erick-

son, 1996). Experimental approaches dominate the third line of inquiry.
With this approach, researchers identify a sample of would-be offenders
and ask them to respond to hypothetical scenarios in which rewards and
risks are manipulated in space and time and are compared against
reported offending likelihoods (e.g., Nagin and Pogarsky, 2003). This third
approach has the advantage of tapping into dynamic decision-making
processes among putative rule breakers, but respondents, who are drawn
heavily from university student populations, might not be representative
of the general offender population. Moreover, the scenarios offered in
some of these research designs might beget responses of questionable
validity.1
Virtually every study on deterrence centrally is concerned with the
strength of, and the contingent relationship between, sanction threats and
offending. The “preeminent empirical regularity” in deterrence research is
that the perceived certainty of sanctions is more important in deterring
crime than the celerity or severity of sanctions (Pogarsky, 2002: 431).
Arguably, the most striking finding to emerge from this body of work is
the counterintuitive “positive punishment effect” (Wood, 2007) in which
persons who previously have been caught and sanctioned seem to be more
likely to offend—not less. Albeit unexpected, the finding is understanda-
ble for four reasons. First, punishment might be perceived to be capri-
cious, unjust, or unfair, which causes sanctioned offenders to commit
additional crimes as a way to lash out (Sherman, 1993). Second, offenders
might be emboldened by prior punishment experience, which causes them
to reset their subsequent risk of detection to a lower level in the belief that
“lightning won’t strike twice” (Pogarsky and Piquero, 2003: 100). Third,
offenders might learn from their prior crime experiences, which lowers
their perceived certainty of detection for future crimes and thereby facili-
tates additional offending (Minor and Harry, 1982). Fourth, offenders with
punishment experience might represent the “worst of the worst,” which
highlights a selection bias in which “those with more prior punishment
experience are simply the most committed offenders who . . . report a
greater likelihood of future offending” (Wood, 2007: 9).

1. As Wright et al. (2004: 189) noted, “This line of research frequently uses inten-
tions to commit crimes in response to hypothetical scenarios as the outcome vari-
able. . . . [A]lthough generally a sound and productive strategy with abundant
advantages over other methodologies, it is possible that it may lead to bias.”
Sources of this bias include “trash talk,” in which respondents say they would
commit a crime that they really would not (to demonstrate bravado) or
pseudorationality, in which respondents claim they would not offend given a par-
ticular scenario but really would if they faced that scenario.
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DETERRENCE AND DETERRABILITY

Lost in most discussions of deterrence is the conceptual distinction
between deterrence and deterrability (but see Pogarsky, 2002). If deter-
rence denotes the perceptual process by which would-be offenders weigh
risks against rewards to determine whether to offend, then deterrability
describes the capacity or willingness of the would-be offender to engage in
this calculation. As a perceptual process, deterrence hinges on offenders
who are deterrable, but deterrability rarely has been operationalized or
specified with any degree of precision. More than 40 years ago, Zimring
and Hawkins (1968: 100) lamented how “few writers indicate precisely the
class of persons deterrent measures are thought to control.” A generation
later, Homel (1993: 65–6) bemoaned how “little can be said about the
nature of ‘differential deterrability’ [Tittle, 1980]—the extent to which dif-
ferent individuals or groups . . . perceive and respond to legal sanctions.”
Little has changed in 40 years.
One of the only recent scholars to look explicitly at the issue, Pogarsky
(2002: 432) remarked that, “punishment threats are consequential only for
a subgroup of the general population.” He then defined deterrability as
“responsiveness to sanction threats” and assigned “individuals to one of
three distinct offending profiles on the basis of the way sanction threats
enter into their decisions to offend” (2002: 432). Acute conformists comply
with the law not because they fear formal sanction threats, but because
they believe that conformity is the right and moral thing to do. Similar to
Andenaes’s (1974: 111) “law-abiding man,” acute conformists are immune
to formal sanctions because they would not break the law even if formal
sanctions were removed.2 Incorrigible offenders populate the other end of
the continuum. Incorrigible offenders represent “committed offenders
who are impervious to dissuasion.” Increases in the perceived certainty
and/or severity of sanction threats mean little to them because of their
unresponsiveness to threatened punishment. Somewhere in the middle lie
deterrable offenders, “a group that includes anyone for whom a sanction
threat is potentially influential” (Pogarsky, 2002: 432).3

2. The degree of “acute conformity,” however, might depend on the seriousness of

the contemplated offense. As Wilkins illustrated (1964: 118–9), the “average
housewife does not need to be deterred from poisoning her husband, but possibly
does need a deterrent to shoplifting! Perhaps the average motorist does not need
a deterrent to stealing cars, but the majority seem to be in need of a deterrent to
speeding or parking in unsuitable places” (emphasis in original, quoted in Zimr-
ing and Hawkins, 1973: 129).
3. Gibbs (1975) introduced a fourth category—those who refrain from offending
not because of deterrence but because of a basic lack of criminal contemplation.
As Gibbs (1975: 89) observed, it is “misleading to speak of the typical citizen as
refraining from criminal acts in everyday activities, for that phrase suggests a
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DETERRENCE AND DETERRABILITY 421

Citing Nagin and Paternoster (1993: 471), Pogarsky (2002: 432) con-
tended that deterrable offenders are “neither strongly committed to crime
nor unwaveringly conformist.” He analogized deterrable offenders to “the
potential criminal, who would have broken the law if it had not been for
the threat of punishment” (Pogarsky, 2002: 404, footnote 3, citing
Andenaes, 1974: 111–2). In the same footnote, Pogarsky drew from ethno-
graphic studies to demonstrate how some offenders show sensitivity to sit-
uational inducements, whereas others “perceive no realistic alternatives to
crime and are therefore unconcerned with the consequences. . . .”
Pogarsky’s typology is useful but preliminary. First, it does not opera-
tionalize the notion of “responsiveness” to sanction threats in a situation-
ally meaningful way. Second, it suggests that deterrability is a binary
construct (you are either deterrable or you are not).4 Third, it implies that
the deterrability categories referenced previously are mutually exclusive
and bereft of variation within offenders and across situations. Fourth, it
implies that deterrability is contingent on criminal commitment. By con-
flating deterrable and undeterrable offenders, Pogarsky had foregone an
important opportunity to identify the conceptual parameters of deter-
rability and to reconcile meaningfully the dynamic tension between
offender commitment and responsiveness to sanction threats. Committed
offenders might be incorrigible, but they are not undeterrable.
Qualitative studies of chronic property offenders bring the tension
between criminal commitment and deterrability into relief. Several offend-
ers in these samples justifiably would be considered incorrigible. Less than
half of Wright and Decker’s (1994) sample, for instance, committed more
than 4,000 lifetime burglaries. Just one of Shover’s (1996: 8–9) offenders
burglarized an estimated 500 structures, whereas a single offender in
Cromwell and Olson’s study (2004: 97) victimized more than 2,000 dwell-
ings during an 8-year period. Despite their apparent incorrigibility, many
such offenders showed conduct that would be considered responsive to
detection concerns. They consulted funeral announcements to identify

conscious contemplation of violations. Indeed, the typical citizen is seldom aware

of conforming to the law, let alone that conformity avoids punishments, social
condemnation, stigmatization, etc.” Gibbs’s category is distinct from Pogarsky’s
acute conformists, however, in the sense that acute conformists theoretically con-
template crime but simply do not engage in it.
4. As Andenaes (1974: 112) aptly noted, “the groups are not static but change with
changing conditions.” Fattah (1993: 249) observes similarly that, even for “the
same individual, the willingness to take risks varies according to the mood and
the situation.” Or, as Felson (1998: 52) remarked, “Each individual varies, not
only over a lifetime but also from moment to moment . . . everyone has . . .
feelings of anger and calm, moods of conformity and defiance, and legal and
illegal behavior. These ups and downs are even more common for people who
commit a lot of crime.”
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422 JACOBS

suitable targets and absent guardians; they contacted prospective homes

by telephone before entering to make sure no one was inside; they
engaged in multiple other “occupancy probes” to minimize the risk of
detection and identification; and they selected targets that provided easy
access, low defensibility, and minimal natural surveillance (Cromwell and
Olson, 2004; Wright and Decker, 1994). Responsiveness to detection con-
cerns is not the exclusive domain of habitual property offenders. Wright
and Decker’s (1997) hard-core armed robbers—slightly more than one
third of whom enacted in excess of 1,500 lifetime armed robberies—com-
mitted many of their offenses close to home or near traffic arteries to facil-
itate escape, selected targets near highly populated housing projects to
have a place in which to blend after their offenses, enacted crimes at times
when ambient social activity was low, and selected victim types that were
beyond the law (because they could not realistically call the police).
Wright and Decker’s (1997) offenders, and others like them (Jacobs and
Wright, 2006; Shover, 1996; Topalli, 2005), could be considered the worst
of the worst—intractably motivated and ostensibly impervious to the law.

RISK SENSITIVITY AND DETERRABILITY

The tension between criminal commitment and responsiveness to sanc-

tion threats can be reconciled through the notion of risk sensitivity. If “risk
calculation is the basic tenet of utilitarian theories of punishment and the
doctrine of deterrence” (Fattah, 1993: 249, emphasis added), then it fol-
lows that risk sensitivity is the most important precondition of deter-
rability. Risk sensitivity denotes the situated concern for detection,
identification, and/or arrest and can be assessed irrespective of motive,
commitment, or crime propensity. This point is important. Not even Bec-
caria (1963 [1764]) or Bentham (1789) asserted that punishments deter
monotonically for all offenders in all situations (cf. Gibbs, 1975: 210);
something Zimring and Hawkins (1973: 97) recognized more recently in
the following:
If an individual’s relative immunity to the threat of sanctions while
filling out his income tax return is attributable to a personality charac-
teristic [such as criminal commitment or “propensity”], the same char-
acteristic could determine his reaction to the temptation to steal or to
exceed the speed limit. If differences among men were the only expla-
nation of differential deterrability, society might possibly be divided
into deterrable and nondeterrable segments . . . [But for] the moment
it is sufficient to observe that general patterns of threat responsive-
ness based on personal [and fixed] differences will predict responses
with only partial effectiveness.
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DETERRENCE AND DETERRABILITY 423

Despite this recognition, deterrence researchers implicitly continue to

reify the distinction between deterrable and undeterrable offenders or at
least gloss over their situated variability (Pogarsky, 2002).5
As a criminological construct, risk sensitivity is implicit in the seminal
treatises of deterrence theory, which include Beccaria’s 240-year-old, An
Essay on Crimes and Punishment and Bentham’s equally vintage, An
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Beccaria (1963
[1764]) presupposed a certain level of situational responsiveness to detec-
tion risk by vesting conceptual power in the certainty and severity of sanc-
tions—a responsiveness that hinges on the notion that would-be offenders
recognize risk and seek to minimize it. Bentham (1789) adopted a similar
approach, contending that would-be offenders exercise a “quantum of sen-
sibility” in perceiving, responding to, and calculating ambient threats.
Through the years, rational choice theorists have continued this emphasis
with concepts like decision frames (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981), edit-
ing, evaluation (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979), and noncompensatory
strategizing (Johnson and Payne, 1986). Decision frames flow from pros-
pect theory (Lattimore and Witte, 1986), an approach that analyzes risk-
averse or risk-seeking behavior in light of an array of possible outcomes.
Editing and evaluation, by contrast, involves an elaborate six-part process
of coding, combination, segregation, cancellation, simplification, and
detection of dominance in relation to some anticipated course of criminal
conduct. The latter calculus requires decision weights, value functions, and
risk perceptions to be processed relative to expected outcome probabili-
ties before a decision is made (Lattimore and Witte, 1986). Noncompensa-
tory strategizing, the third approach, is less elaborate. It adopts a
boundedly rational view of decision making in which offenders weigh only
a few aspects of a few alternatives and ignore the rest (Johnson and Payne,
1986: 173). Noncompensatory strategizing typically produces “condensed”
behavior that is guided by scripts (for an overview, see Exum, 2002: 936).
Though brief, the uncertainty and time pressure that give rise to these
decisions actually might promote more efficient conduct that is better
attuned to situational circumstances.
Risk sensitivity as a precondition for deterrability navigates the tension
between criminal commitment and deterrence (i.e., the notion that com-
mitted offenders are inherently undeterrable, and uncommitted offenders

5. As an anonymous reviewer pointed out, and in all fairness to Pogarsky (2002),

the typology presented in that article was arguably intended to be a useful short-
hand technique for thinking about deterrability as it applies to different kinds of
offenders. Most research in the deterrence tradition is more correlational than
typological and examines how traits like self-control moderate the responsive-
ness of a person to sanction threats. This issue will be explored in greater detail
in the following sections.
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424 JACOBS

are inherently deterrable) by offering analytic precision and empirical effi-

ciency in assessing deterrability. Existing approaches typically do not do
this analysis. Neither ecological nor experimental models, for example, tap
into the dynamic quality of offender decision making as it unfolds in real-
life settings and circumstances. Ecological models are especially weak in
this regard because they “can never reveal very much about the kinds of
persons who are deterrable or the extent to which . . . [behavior is] influ-
enced by sanctions or sanction threats” (Tittle, 1980: 6). Even qualitative
designs that ask offenders after the fact about the mechanics of their deci-
sion making suffer from “retrospective rationality.” Thus, Cromwell,
Olson, and Avary (1991: 42) asserted that “research reporting that a high
percentage of [offenders] make carefully planned, highly rational decisions
based upon a detailed evaluation of environmental cues” might be an arti-
fact of respondents who consciously or unconsciously “engage in rational
reconstruction—a reinterpretation of past behavior through which the
actor recasts activities” in ways that are not necessarily reflective of
thought processes in situ. Similarly, Wright and Decker (1994: 212–3) con-
tended that data collected in the cool confines of a controlled institutional
setting necessarily removes the offender from the temptations and pres-
sures of street life and might not represent the “reality” of discrete con-
duct.6 Commenting on the importance of situated analysis, Paternoster
and Simpson (1993: 51) observed that, “what is pertinent for [offenders] is
the perception of . . . costs and benefits at the time that they are contem-
plating offending. This means that the perceptions–behavior relationship
should be measured as an instantaneous rather than the lagged relation-
ship implicit in either cross-sectional or panel research” (emphasis in origi-
nal). Criminologists long have questioned the value of post hoc designs,
considering it “naive to base a purported measure of deterrence” on them
(Gibbs, 1975: 15).
Recognizing that criminal commitment and deterrability are not neces-
sarily coterminous and that risk sensitivity and criminal motivation need
not be inversely related either, the question turns to operationalizing risk
sensitivity. Although choice might flow from mentalistic processes, choice
produces conduct that can be interpreted for broader inferential meaning.
Particularly relevant in this regard are the target selection and enactment
tactics that offenders use in discrete offenses, which provide a direct win-
dow into their responsiveness to sanction threats. The relative presence or

6. In part to address this problem, Wright and his colleagues (Bennett and Wright,
1984; Wright and Decker, 1994) used the “walkabout” methodology in which
they accompanied burglars to prior offense locations to capture extemporaneous
feelings, thoughts, and reflections that might not have emerged in an institutional
setting.
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DETERRENCE AND DETERRABILITY 425

absence of risk sensitivity as expressed in these tactics can reveal the pres-
ence or absence of deterrability. The more risk sensitive the offender, the
more deterrable he or she is. Consider the following:
An offender robs and assaults three store employees at gunpoint. He
wears a mask and gloves. He instructs his victims not to look at him. He
makes sure not to touch anything in the store despite the fact that his
hands are covered. He waits until all of the customers inside the store have
left, and the store is about to be closed. He is aware of an alarm system
inside the store. He asks about the location of surveillance cameras inside
the store. He strikes one of the clerks repeatedly because she is not open-
ing the safe fast enough—thereby recognizing the relationship between
detection risk and offense duration. He ties up his victims to prevent resis-
tance during the crime and to delay escape after he leaves. Before fleeing
from the store, he even dumps the employees’ purses on the floor to
retrieve identifying information and ostensibly deter them from assisting
an investigation. Singly and in combination, these behaviors betray sensi-
tivity to risk and an offender concerned with detection and arrest.
Contrast this crime with a second offense in which the perpetrator robs
and abducts a woman from the parking lot of her apartment complex and
sexually assaults her at a second location. The offender makes no attempt
to conceal his identity, despite multiple face-to-face encounters with the
victim during a 2-hour period. After robbing the woman at the apartment
complex and transporting her to a public park, he sexually assaults her in
an elevated area of the park, potentially visible to at least seven different
houses on the perimeter of the park. The park itself is in close proximity to
precinct headquarters of the local police department—a staging ground
for approximately 70 commissioned officers. The offender leaves numer-
ous incriminating items at the crime scene, which includes the shirt he uses
to wipe seminal fluid from the victim. Despite having 2 days between the
time of the assault and the time the police processed the crime scene, he
fails to remove these items. Following the assault, the offender kneels
down face to face with the victim, tells her about his life, and asks for her
phone number. Grossly insensitive to risk, such behaviors are inconsistent
with a deterrable offender.
Or consider a third offense in which the implicated offender breaks into
an office suite at a medical building and robs and assaults an employee
working after hours there. The offender targets a medical building for a
noncommercial (person-to-person) robbery despite the fact that the imme-
diate area boasts 7 banks, 16 gas stations, 22 grocery stores, and 42 restau-
rants—more lucrative targets but also ones perceptibly more difficult to
“take.” Person-targets in the area exist by the hundreds. Data from the
local traffic-engineering department reveal that a nearby intersection ser-
vices approximately 9,000,000 vehicles per year. Relative to an isolated
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426 JACOBS

victim nestled inside a closed office suite, these more public targets benefit
from the protective effect of informal social control. This offender selects
a location in which informal social control was low or absent.
Within the building, the offender targets an office on the second floor,
securing access through a back door away from the main hallway fully 2
hours after downstairs activity at the medical building ceased. The
offender sneaks up on the victim from behind, which gives her no chance
to disrupt the offense or to flee. Before committing what arguably is the
loudest physical part of the offense (the beating), he moves the victim
inside an interior bathroom of the suite, which provides additional per-
ceived insulation from sight and sound. After seizing the victim’s valu-
ables, he directs her to undress. He then hides her clothes in various places
around the office, tells her not to move, beats her to the point of uncon-
sciousness, tells her to lie down in her own blood, and says he will kill her
if she calls the police. Immobilizing his victim in these ways precludes the
victim from yelling, running, or calling anyone for several minutes after he
leaves. The victim herself reports that the offender tells her that he did
these things so she could not chase after him. Each of these behaviors is
consistent with a risk-sensitive offender. Together, they suggest the kind of
responsiveness to sanction threats necessary to establish deterrability
(Pogarsky, 2002).7
As implied in the above vignettes,8 operationalizing risk sensitivity
requires the analyst to assess the tactical and contextual components of
the offense—how it is committed, against whom, where, when, and under
what conditions. Each of these components can be examined and assessed
as part of a risk-sensitivity index. The index catalogs the presence or
absence of concealment, natural surveillance, informal social control, and
other contextual variables relevant to detection risk. It begins with the
offender and works outward. Does he or she wear a mask? Does he or she
camouflage his or her identity in some other way? If the offense involves
the likelihood of leaving physical evidence that might tie the offender to
the crime scene, then does he or she take measures to reduce that possibil-
ity? Is he or she careful not to touch objects that might leave prints? Does
he or she wear gloves? If the offense involves sexual contact, then does the
offender wear a condom?
It is not necessarily enough to ask whether concealment is used. The
nature of the concealment also must be scrutinized because it can produce
the opposite of its intended effect. In one offense known to the author,

7. What specific measures might have deterred this offender is a separate question
and is based on an analysis of the crime-prevention needs of the particular prop-
erty in question.
8. The offenses described in these three vignettes are drawn from actual crimes
reported to the police.
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DETERRENCE AND DETERRABILITY 427

two offenders carjacked and killed a victim in the parking lot of a local
grocery store. Prior to committing the offense, both offenders placed ball
caps on their heads and bandanas over their faces. The ball caps they
wore, however, were emblazoned with oversized yellow letters on the
front that depicted the name of the street gang to which they belonged. On
the back of the hats were yellow numbers denoting the particular block
numbers where they congregated. The bandanas they wore were bright
yellow—the kind of color that a jogger or road worker might wear to draw
attention to him- or herself. Importantly, the offense was not undertaken
as part of any gang initiation (thus, removing doubt about the role of crim-
inal commitment in their deterrability or lack thereof).
The wrong concealment paradoxically can expose offenders, but the
right concealment can be undermined by inattention to detail. One drug
dealer I interviewed recounted being robbed and carjacked by a masked
offender. During the offense, the robber wore a particular pair of boots,
which had distinctive paint stains. My respondent recognized them to be
owned by a customer he periodically served. Locating the robber the next
day (he lived upstairs in the same extended-stay motel), my respondent
beat the man terribly, retrieving his stolen car and some money the man
had seized. In most stranger-on-stranger crimes, inadvertent giveaways
will not be a problem. Where prior knowledge exists between the victim
and the offender, risk-sensitive offenders will account for the possibility
and act accordingly.
Potential for exposure can come from co-offenders and even target
choice, so attention might be directed toward these factors as well. Prior
research (Jacobs, 2000) suggests, for example, that the decision to offend
by oneself or only with trusted co-offenders might be risk sensitive inas-
much as the offender makes the choice to prevent being “snitched on” by
unreliable compatriots. As for target selection, risk-sensitive offenders
might choose “extralegal” crime victims because they are beyond the law
and realistically cannot report the offense to the police (Jacobs, 2000;
Wright and Decker, 1997).
Tactical elements of risk sensitivity are contextual as well, which require
the analyst to focus on the venue in which the offense is performed. Does
the location have a lot of natural surveillance or a little? Is natural surveil-
lance at the incident location typically jumpstarted at a moment’s notice
(e.g., from frequent and/or predictable intrusions); how strong is that pro-
clivity relative to the anticipated offense duration, and does the offender
recognize this potential prior to acting? Does the location have physical
surveillance or not? If so, what kind and how much? Does the location
permit easy escape? Does the location have strong or weak informal social
control? Informal social control long has been recognized as one of the
most powerful crime deterrents, but some offenders are oblivious to it. In
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428 JACOBS

one offense known to the author, the offender walked up to a man and his
girlfriend as they were entering a restaurant to eat dinner. Unmasked, the
offender shot the man at point-blank range, took his car keys, and
attempted to start the man’s vehicle (parked a few feet away). The offense
occurred in full view of a row of large windows at the restaurant. It was
peak dinner hour, and the restaurant was packed. Two patrons were leav-
ing the restaurant right before the shooting and had just walked by the
offender as he approached the victim. The parking lot was well lit. A sur-
veillance camera mounted on top of the restaurant was recording.
In another incident known to the author, an offender stabbed a victim
after a traffic dispute in a fully lit Taco Bell drive-thru lane. The dispute
and subsequent stabbing took place in view of at least ten potential eye-
witnesses. The entire encounter was captured on surveillance video and
(subsequently) broadcast worldwide on YouTube. The offender began the
altercation with the victim while the victim was on the phone with the police
(to report the traffic accident) and under the reasonable presumption that
the police were on their way. The offender did not attempt to conceal or
disguise his identity in any way. The offender attacked the victim despite
the fact that he (the offender) had $6,000 worth of marijuana packaged for
sale under the seat of his car— a quantity that would trigger a charge of
intent to distribute (as opposed to simple possession) if the police were to
discover it (recall that the police were on their way). The offender
attacked the victim despite the presence and direct intervention of at least
two peacemakers (a cousin of the offender and an unrelated customer).
Following the stabbing, the offender made no attempt to flee, despite the
fact that he knew the police were coming and were arriving at the Taco
Bell as the stabbing concluded.
The various tactical and situational elements explored previously can
inform a relatively simple checklist that operationalizes risk sensitivity in
discrete circumstances. The concealment variables (e.g., mask or not, con-
dom or not, gloves or not) can be nominal level; lighting, natural surveil-
lance, physical surveillance, and informal social control can be ordinal
level. Both sets of variables can be disaggregated into different subcom-
ponents (e.g., informal social control might be measured by the number of
bystanders, their proximity to the offense location, or the extent to which
they actually witnessed the incident in question). The index would yield a
sum-total measure that would comprise a risk-sensitivity score. The
indexed score, in turn, could be compared across offenders and offenses
and regressed against any number of other relevant variables (e.g., type of
crime, motive, victim–offender relationship, weapon involvement,
offender age, victim age, offender educational level, offender marital sta-
tus, offender employment status). The actual data would come from police
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DETERRENCE AND DETERRABILITY 429

reports, witness statements, interviews with offenders, or some combina-

tion thereof.
Data limitations certainly could result. Precise information about light-
ing, natural surveillance, physical surveillance, and informal social control
might be lacking. Offenders, victims, or witnesses might not be available to
interview. Participants can disagree about what they recall or what condi-
tions actually were present at the time of the incident. More importantly,
any quantitative indicator of risk sensitivity must be nuanced by fine-
grained qualitative analysis. Certain indicia of risk sensitivity, for example,
might be at odds with one another, and the analyst has to reconcile emerg-
ing conflicts. Consider a masked offender who carjacks a vehicle at a busy
intersection relative to an unmasked offender who commits the same
offense in an area devoid of natural surveillance. What about an offender
who does not wear a mask because it might alert bystanders of his nefari-
ous intentions, bring attention to himself, and make the offense riskier? In
some circumstances, it is conceivably more risk sensitive to approach a
robbery victim from behind, discretely convey the presence of a weapon,
seize the valuables, and run away before the victim ever gets a good look
at you and before anyone else around becomes aware of what you are
doing (all of which can happen in a setting where informal social control is
ample). The issue of intention and its role in the analysis is important; if
offenders try to minimize the chance of detection through concealment
measures or location selection but do it inaccurately or improperly, then
how should the analysis proceed? Qualitative analysis will credit the
attempt but contextualize the failure against what the offender knew, or
should have known to do, to provide a more nuanced understanding of
risk sensitivity.
Risk sensitivity is not some magical new concept. As stated earlier, the
construct goes back more than 200 years; contemporary research applies
measurable constructs of risk and its perception in numerous contexts
(e.g., Nagin and Pogarsky, 2001). The difference is that these studies typi-
cally are perceptual and apply the “intentions to offend” approach after
manipulating sanction certainties and/or severities. The approach outlined
here is retrospective and is grounded in concrete indicators rooted in
actual crimes. Paradoxically, it is the discrete failure of deterrence that
renders the retrospective assessment possible (because the unit of analysis
is a committed crime involving a potentially responsive offender), but the
conclusion that deterrable offenders are “responsive to sanction threats”
(Pogarsky, 2002) requires that construct (deterrability) to be operational-
ized in an empirically meaningful way. Prospective designs have trouble
doing this analysis because they are inherently hypothetical. Retrospective
designs are grounded in actual decision-making processes that betray a
concern for detection or the lack of it.
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430 JACOBS

The retrospective approach retains the situational emphasis of utilita-

rian theory but applies grounded theoretic methodology to offer specific
evidence of deterrability. By nesting deterrability in the context of discrete
offenses, the assessment, at least in theory, will offer researchers an empir-
ical way to calculate the total number of deterrable crimes and to disaggre-
gate those offenses by category, motive, time, place, type, weapon
involvement, and assorted other variables. Because the invisibility of
deterrence is one of the single-most vexing problems facing the deterrence
paradigm, the approach described here represents a potentially important
methodological advancement: When crime does not happen, it historically
has been difficult to argue that it did not happen because the offender was
deterred. When crime does happen, it historically has been difficult to
determine that it would not have happened had a different complement of
situational crime-prevention measures been in place. Gauging the strength
and direction of situated risk sensitivity can move criminology closer to a
resolution of this problem. This resolution avoids the use of criminal com-
mitment as the basis for assessing deterrability—the importance of which
is explored in the following section.

DIVORCING COMMITMENT FROM

DETERRABILITY: DETERRENCE,
PREVENTION, AND PROPENSITY
Recall that Pogarsky (2002) used criminal commitment to define both
incorrigible and deterrable offenders. Zimring and Hawkins (1973)
divorced the construct from any deterrability assessment but offered no
substitute criterion. The latter authors implicitly recognized, however, that
commitment and deterrability are not inversely related; committed offend-
ers can exercise risk sensitivity to permit continued offending, whereas
uncommitted offenders (e.g., prompted only by opportunity) can proceed
recklessly at high risk unless or until such time that the opportunity disap-
pears.9 Although both possibilities underscore the fact that commitment is
not the axial criterion around which deterrability should revolve, the for-
mer betrays an equally important distinction—both a conceptual and a
practical one—between deterrence and prevention. This distinction has
important implications for identifying suitable candidates for situational
crime prevention.
Deterrence is situational; it asks whether a specific offender committing
a specific offense can be inhibited. Prevention is global; it asks whether the

9. As Felson (1998: 48) noted “No human being [however conforming he or she
typically is] is immune from committing a crime, even a major one . . . [A]nyone
can be tempted by something at some time. . . . Keeping temptations out of sight
or mind also helps people to follow rules.”
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criminal conduct of a specific offender regardless of circumstances can be

stopped. Crimes can be deterred but not prevented, although prevention
can flow from deterrence. When an offender is incarcerated, he or she is
specifically deterred from robbery, theft, and other criminal behavior in
the public realm. Specific deterrence and prevention are coterminous so
long as the offender is incarcerated (i.e., the incapacitation effect). Gen-
eral deterrence and prevention are coterminous when would-be offenders
fear sanction threats and decide never to offend.
The distinction between deterrence and prevention is important because
of the role of situational measures in thwarting a risk-sensitive offender
but not a risk-insensitive one. When assessing the efficacy of deterrence,
criminologists historically have focused more on distal sanction threats or
the perceived manipulations of sanction threats than on proximate inhibi-
tors of rule breaking. Although more recent theories (Felson, 1998) move
the discipline closer to situated measures with a direct bearing on deter-
rence (e.g., defensible space, territorial reinforcement, access controls, and
guardianship), a disconnect remains regarding the efficacy of these mea-
sures for specific offenders. Routine activities theory, for example, implies
that increasing guardianship and decreasing target suitability will inhibit
offenders, but the theory does not specify who would be inhibited or why.
Deterrence researchers have tried to fill this gap by applying theories of
individual difference, but the application is imprecise. This imprecision is
especially glaring when the relevant explanatory trait is criminal propen-
sity (i.e., self-control) because it is unclear whether propensity increases or
decreases deterrability.
Criminal propensity is arguably the most widely used approach for
examining influences of individual differences on rule breaking and its
inhibition. Although classical theory suggests that propensity is more or
less constant and that variation in offending is an artifact of situational
inducements and constraints, contemporary theorists offer a more
nuanced view. In particular, Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) linked varia-
tions in crime propensity to impulsivity and implied that impulsivity and
risk sensitivity will be mutually exclusive. Wright et al. (2004: 182) cap-
tured it best: “By seeking immediate gratification, those at high levels of
criminal propensity are relatively unmoved by the potential pains of pun-
ishment that are both uncertain and removed in the future.” Paradoxically,
Gottfredson and Hirschi claimed that crime-prone persons are attracted to
crime opportunities that involve “little risk of detection and little risk of
resistance” (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990: 13; see also Grasmick et al.,
1993: 11). If persons with low self-control are sensitive to risk and if crime
represents the confluence of low self-control and opportunity, then
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432 JACOBS

responsiveness to situational constraints (such as defensible space, territo-

rial reinforcement, natural surveillance, and guardianship) should be the
rule rather than the exception.
Indeed, some analysts contend that persons with high criminal propen-
sity actually might be more deterred by these proximate inhibitors of
crime rather than less. Citing the classic work of Talcott Parsons (1937),
Wright et al. (2004) explained that criminally prone persons are not
affected by the informal mechanisms of social control that restrain nonof-
fenders. Because informal restraints lack salience to them, crime-prone
persons only can be inhibited by external measures. “Deterrence will best
inhibit the criminal activity of those who are actively at risk of offending.
Those who are effectively inhibited from crime by other [informal] consid-
erations will be immune to the threat of punishment” (Wright et al., 2004:
184). Other criminologists similarly have observed that deterrence might
be limited to “marginal” populations (Toby, 1964; Zimring and Hawkins,
1968).10
Albeit intriguing, such discussions again confuse deterrence and preven-
tion, which is important for assessing the possible efficacy of situational
crime prevention in deterring specific offenders in specific situations. If
risk sensitivity causes displacement of crime in space and time, then crimes
will be delayed (deterred) but not stopped (prevented). Moreover, crimi-
nal commitment can channel offending in ways that neutralize sanction
threats or cause those threats to be viewed as surmountable. In the latter
case, offenders would be deterrable but not deterred. Grasmick et al.’s
(1993: 14) self-control scale implicitly recognized this “defiance” potential
(Sherman, 1993) in three of the four items that comprise, ironically, the
risk-seeking component of low self-control (i.e., “I like to test myself every
now and then by doing something a little risky,” “Sometimes I will take a
risk just for the fun of it,” “I sometimes find it exciting to do things for
which I might get in trouble”). Even the impulsivity portion of the Gras-
mick et al. (1993) scale would seem to entertain the possibility of defiance.
Three scale items (“I don’t devote much thought and effort to preparing
for the future,” “I often do whatever brings me pleasure here and now,
even at the cost of some distant goal,” and “I’m more concerned with what
happens to me in the short run than in the long run,” Grasmick et al.,
1993: 14) not only are potentially consistent with risk sensitivity, but the

10. As an anonymous reviewer noted, the “marginal groups” approach is a two-step

process that involves the identification of persons as “next most likely” to offend
(based on criminological data), followed by an analysis of their responsiveness to
available sanction threats.
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DETERRENCE AND DETERRABILITY 433

last item would seem to make the adoption of detection-reduction mea-

sures (in discrete crimes) more likely rather than less. A theoretical predi-
cate exists for such behavior; it is rooted in restrictive deterrence (Gibbs,
1975).
Restrictive deterrence denotes the process by which offenders reduce
the risk of detection by way of probabilistic and/or particularistic adjust-
ments in conduct (Jacobs, 1996). Restrictive deterrence is expressed in one
of four ways:
1. The offender reduces the number of crimes he or she commits dur-
ing a particular period of time;
2. The offender commits crimes of lesser seriousness than the contem-
plated act, believing that punishment will not be as severe for a “more
minor” infraction (thus, an offender shoplifts a $100 pair of jeans
instead of robbing a convenient store for the same monetary reward);
3. The offender engages in situational measures to enhance the
probability that the contemplated offense will be undertaken without
risk of detection (e.g., the offender enlists a proxy to commit a per-
son-on-person crime for him or her because the victim is familiar and
otherwise could identify the offender);
4. The offender recognizes a risky situational context, which causes
him or her to commit the same crime at a different place or time.
Each of these offenders is committed yet sensitive to risk—deterrable but
not deterred. Because criminal conduct adapts rather than shuts down
completely, some criminologists prefer to call this “partial deterrence”
(Gibbs, 1975). Partial deterrence lies at the confluence of criminal commit-
ment and risk sensitivity. Partial deterrence betrays the real possibility
that the most deterrable offenders also might be the hardest to stop
(prevent).
The deterrence–prevention distinction highlights how criminal commit-
ment, by itself, cannot be an adequate empirical basis for assessing deter-
rability. The determination should be made situationally by assessing risk
sensitivity as offenders express it in discrete settings and circumstances. Its
relative presence or absence can help determine the efficacy of situational
crime prevention for particular offenders committing particular crimes.11

11. Skeptics might contend that the deterrence–prevention distinction is immaterial

because a crime that is deterred one moment will be committed shortly thereaf-
ter, in a different context involving less effective situational crime prevention.
Routine activities theory long has confronted the same criticism (i.e., offenders
inevitably find soft spots in which to do their dirty work, and a fortress society is
neither feasible nor desirable). Yet criminologists also have noted that crime-
prevention benefits can diffuse from one venue to another. If offenders overesti-
mate their subsequent risk of offending in related contexts and if this overestima-
tion is persistent, then deterrence and prevention become closer cousins.
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434 JACOBS

PROXIMATE INFLUENCES ON RISK SENSITIVITY

If motivation, or criminal commitment, is less relevant to assessing
deterrability than the process by which motivation and commitment pro-
duce changing degrees of risk sensitivity, then risk sensitivity as a depen-
dent variable warrants empirical attention. Proximate influences on risk
sensitivity such as anger (Exum, 2002), inebriation (Shover, 1994), moral-
ism (Jacobs and Wright, 2006), poor executive functioning (Nagin and
Paternoster, 1993), and desperation (Wright and Decker, 1994) have been
documented well. Each of these factors plays an obvious role in mediating
detection concerns and need not be belabored here. Less well understood
is the growing cadre of microstructural, personal, and perceptual traits that
affect responsiveness to sanction threats and, in turn, deterrability (Nagin
and Pogarsky, 2003: 170).
In this regard, group influence is “one of the most important [yet]
understudied contingencies affecting the deterrence process” (Nagin and
Pogarsky, 2003: 185, citing Tittle and Paternoster, 2000). Qualitative
research indicates that interaction with accomplices reduces the fear of
detection and engenders social support for serious law-breaking (Hoch-
stetler, 2001). Furthermore, criminologists believe that co-offenders dif-
fuse culpability for offending, which might embolden individual
participants and promote perceptions of invincibility (Walters, 1990). Inso-
far as a division of labor among co-offenders provides greater perceived
control over crime and less perceived responsibility for it, risk sensitivity
will be undermined more.
Personal traits such as a self-serving bias, or individuals’ tendency to
“shade judgments in a manner favorable to themselves” (Nagin and Pogar-
sky, 2003: 171) also might be relevant in affecting responsiveness to sanc-
tion threats. If would-be offenders believe that they are more skillful at
avoiding detection than others, then they can become superconfident, and
careless. These “emboldening effects” are amplified by experience with

Criminologists have explored punishment and punishment-avoidance effects as

variables in the deterrence process (Paternoster and Piquero, 1995), and experi-
ence with “crime avoidance” (i.e., not committing a particular crime that one was
going to commit) might be just as potent in influencing future offending decisions
(in other words, if risk sensitivity is created by prior circumstances in which
offenders faced a high detection risk, the offender decides not to offend, and risk
sensitivity becomes portable and reasonably enduring, then additional crimes by
that offender might be stopped). Indeed, the act of “not acting” could stop a run
of offending that otherwise would have ensued; one offense can lead to many
because spree-like behavior ensues from overconfidence bred by getting away
with the first one. The net crime-prevention effect created by such processes
could be substantial, although it would depend on risk sensitivity’s portability
and persistence.
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DETERRENCE AND DETERRABILITY 435

both punishment and punishment avoidance (Paternoster and Piquero,

1995); offenders sanctioned for something they have done in the past learn
from their mistakes and how not to repeat them. Would-be offenders also
can hear about others who are sanctioned and vow not to repeat their
mistakes. Both types of experience (direct and vicarious) energize social
learning that decreases subsequent detection risk, although it certainly is
possible that personal experience with punishment can erode risk sensitiv-
ity if, for example, would-be offenders think that lightning (i.e., sanctions)
will not strike twice. Not caring (i.e., being grossly insensitive to risk)
would be consistent with someone who has “reset” their detection risk to a
lower level because he or she feels as if he or she can act with impunity
(Pogarsky and Piquero, 2003).
The relationship between punishment avoidance and risk sensitivity also
bears mentioning. Offenders who persistently avoid sanctions and who are
around others who have done the same might believe themselves to be
invincible. The greater the number and salience of such experiences, the
stronger such perceptions might become (“Everyone I know is getting
away with crime, so I must have nothing to worry about.”). The timing
and/or periodicity of such experiences can be relevant as well. Punishment
avoidance experiences in the remote past might not be as salient in pro-
ducing risk-insensitive conduct as fresher ones, whereas punishment
avoidance experiences that “bunch up” during a short time interval can
promote greater risk insensitivity than experiences that accrue intermit-
tently and slowly. Offenders engaged in short but intense crime sprees, for
example, can become increasingly brazen and proceed with impunity.
Punishment and punishment avoidance experiences are not necessarily
proxies for criminal experience in mediating risk sensitivity, although one
does imply the other (i.e., the more times you commit crime, the more
exposed to both punishment and punishment avoidance you become).
With regard to criminal experience, the issue is whether novice offenders
are “hypercareful worriers” or so oblivious to sanction threats that they
show reckless disregard for detection. Although criminal experience has
been positively correlated with the knowledge of sanctions (CAACP,
1968), the relationship between criminal experience and risk sensitivity has
not been explored systematically, nor has the relative contribution of crim-
inal experience to risk sensitivity when punishment and/or punishment
avoidance effects are operating at the same time.

IN CLOSING
Criminologists long have contended that some offenses are more deter-
rable than others, although most such claims focus on the type of crime
involved (Paternoster and Simpson, 1993), the motives that drive the
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436 JACOBS

offense, (Chambliss, 1967), or the people who commit the crime. The dis-
cussion offered here incorporates type, person, and motive within a
broader situational rubric of risk sensitivity.
To be sure, responsiveness to sanction threats traditionally has been
conceptualized in abstract terms distal to the actual offense. Routine activ-
ity theory has spent the better part of 30 years arguing that threats of
severe punishment are irrelevant and that the “crime triangle” must be
disrupted if deterrence is to be achieved. As Eck (1997: 243) remarked,
Most offender based strategies try to sway offenders’ minds weeks,
months, or years before they confront a tempting criminal opportu-
nity. If offenders pay closer attention to the situation immediately
before them than to the uncertain long term risks of their behavior,
then it is quite possible that prevention at places may have a greater
impact on offending than increases in penalties or less tangible
increases in risks (e.g., decreases in police response time, increased
police presence, or greater numbers of arrests and convictions).
Cromwell and Olson (2004: 23) concurred, concluding that “considera-
tion of long-term risk is almost non-existent in the decision process of
most [offenders]. . . . Not only do they not consider next month or next
year, most do not even consider next day.” The challenge is to identify
which offenders in which situations make contemporaneous considera-
tions and to operationalize how they do that. Domain analysis (Spradley,
1980) that attends to the tactical and situational aspects of risk sensitivity
can help generate data to answer these questions empirically.
Although this type of approach might not provide hard-and-fast answers
in regard to why risk sensitivity does or does not exist in particular circum-
stances, it does reveal specific incidents that likely would have been inhib-
ited by preventive measures appropriate to the setting in question. Such a
revelation cuts to the core of the nexus between crime-prevention policy
and crime etiology by linking the absence of a particular measure (or mea-
sures) to the proximate cause of a crime. In so doing, the approach fills
two theoretical gaps—one spawned by deterrence theory (by nesting
deterrability in situated decision making rather than in criminal commit-
ment or in crime propensity), the other by routine activities theory (by
identifying which offenders in which circumstances could have been inhib-
ited but were not).

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Bruce A. Jacobs is currently a professor of criminology at the University

of Texas at Dallas. He researches the decision-making processes of active
offenders.