CRIMINAL DETERRENCE AND SENTENCE SEVERITY: AN

ANALYSIS OF RECENT RESEARCH

by Andrew von Hirsch, Anthony E. Bottoms, Elizabeth Burney and P-O. Wikstrom

Summary of Findings

The Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University was commissioned by the Home Office to
undertake a review of the literature on criminal deterrence, with special reference to the question
whether severer sentences constitute a more effective deterrent against crime. The study follows
officially-sponsored reviews undertaken around 20 years ago in this country (Beyleveld, 1980) and
in the United States (Blumstein et al., 1978). The present review focusses on recent deterrence
research.

The specific issues the researchers were asked to examine were:

(A) the evidence from the literature that criminal justice interventions have an effect on
potential offenders’ willingness to commit crimes;

(B) the extent to which any effects can be separately quantified in terms of the risk of being
caught, convicted or given a more severe sentence;

(C) evidence of offenders responding to sentencing policy or practice;

(D) evidence that processes outside the criminal justice system are effective in dissuading
people from offending;

(E) the way in which offenders make decisions and the extent to which deterrence plays a part.

The review finds convincing evidence from the literature that, in some circumstances, deterrence
works. Ordinary people can be deterred by both formal and informal sanctions. The criminal
justice system as a whole also exercises a deterrent effect -- crime would be more prevalent if
offenders could offend with impunity. The review therefore concentrated on the issue of ‘marginal
deterrence’, i.e. the effects of making changes to: (1) certainty of punishment (e.g., the likelihood of
being apprehended and convicted); and (2) severity of punishment (e.g., the likelihood of a
convicted offender's being imprisoned, and the length of his or her prison sentence). It is the latter
issue, of severity, which is the report's primary concern.

The report concludes that the studies reviewed do not provide a basis for inferring that increasing
the severity of sentences generally is capable of enhancing deterrent effects. The study's main
findings are the following:

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(1) Studying Marginal Deterrence. There are technical difficulties involved in demonstrating
convincing marginal deterrent effects, and the report therefore contains an analysis of the elements
needed for satisfactory research designs. Addressed issues include: (1) the use of variables that
adequately distinguish severity from certainty of punishment, (2) adequate controls for other
possible influences on crime rates; and (3) satisfactory methods of examining whether and to what
extent changes in criminal-justice policies actually alter potential offenders' beliefs concerning the
risks of punishment. It is suggested how a well designed study, that properly addresses issues such
as these, can provide ways of validly inferring whether or not a deterrent effect is at work in a given
situation.

(2) Correlations: Certainty Effects. The survey examines recent studies concerning statistical
relationships between changed certainty or severity of punishment and crime rates. Most notable of
these studies are Farrington, Langan and Wikstrom (1994), and Langan and Farrington (1998),
which examine crime and punishment trends in England and the U.S. during periods covering
1981-96, and which calculate the statistical relationships between these trends. This research,
confirming earlier deterrence studies, finds substantial negative correlations between the likelihood
of conviction (a "certainty" measure) and crime rates. (A "negative correlation" means here, in
statisticians' language, that increased likelihood of conviction is statistically associated with
declining crime rates, or vice-versa.) While further research would be needed to confirm that these
associations are attributable to deterrence, such a pattern is at least consistent with an hypothesis of
marginal deterrence with respect to the certainty of punishment.

(3) Correlations: Severity Effects. In the Farrington studies just mentioned, the statistical
associations between severity of punishment and crime rates were much weaker. Such negative
correlations between sentence severity and crime rates as were found to exist generally were not
sufficient to achieve statistical significance. These patterns, which are consistent with those found in
earlier studies, provide little support for an hypothesis of marginal deterrence with respect to
severity of punishment. One of these studies, Farrington, Langan and Wikstrom (1994), provides
calculations that compare the English and America (as well as Swedish) trends. The absence of a
finding in that study of strong correlations for severity is notable -- because U.S. penalty levels have
been substantially higher than English levels during the periods studied.

The survey also examines three econometric studies of deterrence (Marvell and Moody 1994;
Reilly and Witt 1996; and Levitt 1996). The first of these, using American data from 1973-91, finds
prison populations to have been negatively correlated with crime rates. However, this study's
measure -- prison populations -- does not distinguish certainty from severity, and hence provides no
basis for inference concerning severity effects. The second, using English data from 1980-91, finds
one measure of severity -- sentence length -- to have been similarly correlated with crime rates.
However, the present review concludes that this study's measure of severity is not specified
adequately, since no controls are provided for the likelihood of a convicted offender's being
imprisoned. The third, by Levitt, concerns the effects of the large-scale prisoner releases that
occurred in connection with prison-overcrowding litigation in twelve southern U.S. states. Its data
might reasonably be interpreted as suggesting a statistical correlation between one measure of
severity (time served in prison) and crime rates. However, the Levitt study's data would seem to
square less well with an hypothesis of marginal deterrence than with possible incapacitative effects;
and since the study does not examine the risk profiles of the released prisoners involved, any
inferences concerning possible incapacitation would not be easily generalisable to other settings.

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(4) Perceptual and Contextual Deterrence. The survey examines the considerable body of recent
literature on "perceptual" deterrence. This literature, based largely on surveys, examines the link
between potential offenders' beliefs concerning likelihood or severity of punishment, and their
reported decisions or expectations of offending. It suggests that, for at least some classes of
potential offenders, their perceptions of the risks of being apprehended and punished (when they
are aware of such risks) affect their reported choices of whether to offend. These studies thus help
confirm that known penal threats can have a deterrent effect. However, the studies with the least
methodological problems (those based on scenarios of offending) are mostly concerned with
informal sanctions; and, to the extent they address criminal-justice responses at all, deal with
"certainty" variables such as perceived likelihood of prosecution. They thus do not shed much light
on questions of severity effects.

(5) Social Ties. The recent perceptual studies, and a few available studies of actual offending
behaviour, provide additional confirmation for the hypothesis that social ties, or the lack of them,
affect the deterrent effects of the criminal-justice policies -- with persons having strong social ties
(i.e., strong links to families, local communities, etc.) being the more readily deterred by prospects
of being apprehended. There is also evidence from studies of offender decisionmaking that
persistent offenders with weak social ties, such as persistent burglars, often act impulsively, and in
circumstances that they themselves define as a situation of pressing need (e.g. a need for money, or
a need to defend a status or reputation). Such impulsivity may reduce these offenders' amenability
to being deterred through increased penalties.

(6) Knowledge of Punishment Threats. Deterrence concerns desistance from crime through fear
of the legal consequences. It is consequently subjective, so that changes in criminal justice policies
can have no deterrent effect unless they alter potential offenders' beliefs about sanction risks. Thus
even were crime rates statistically associated with changes in certainty or severity of punishment,
this would not establish a deterrent effect unless there also were evidence that considerable
numbers of potential offenders were aware of those changes. The most serious deficiency in current
deterrence research, the report finds, is the absence of systematic inquiry into the extent of that
awareness. A recent Home Office study (Hough and Roberts 1998) shows that members of the
general public tend to be in error about sanction risks, in the direction of underestimating greatly
severity of the sanctions actually imposed. To the extent these misconceptions are shared by those
tempted to offend, changes in sentencing policy may fail to achieve deterrent objectives -- because
potential offenders cannot be deterred by sentencing changes of which they are unaware. It is true
that when sentencing changes are introduced, newly-sentenced offenders may experience their
effects; and that information may be communicated through their social networks. But it is not
known how widely, or how quickly, such information spreads. Since general deterrence is directed
to potential offenders, and not necessarily only to convicted offenders and their immediate peers,
this issue of dissemination is a critical, and unexplored, area of study. The absence of such data on
knowledge of punishment risks makes it difficult to draw valid inferences concerning the marginal
deterrent effects of changes in sanction levels.

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References

Beyleveld, D. (1980). A Bibliography on General Deterrence (Farnborough: Saxon House).

Blumstein, A., Cohen, J., and Nagin, D. (eds.) (1978). Deterrence and Incapacitation
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences).

Farrington, D.P., Langan, P.A., and Wikstrom, P-O. (1994). "Changes in Crime and Punishment in
America, England and Sweden between the 1980s and the 1990s", Studies in Crime Prevention 3:
104-131.

Hough, M., and Roberts, J. (1998). Attitudes to Punishment: Findings from the British Crime
Survey, Home Office Research Study No. 179 (London: HMSO).

Langan, P.A., and Farrington, D.P. (1998). Crime and Justice in the United States and England
and Wales, 1981-96 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics)

Levitt, S.D. (1996). "The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison
Overcrowding Litigation" Quarterly Journal of Economics 111: 319-51.

Marvell, T.B., and Moody, C.E. (1994). "Prison Population Growth and Crime Reduction"
Journal of Quantitative Criminology 10: 109-40.

Reilly, B., and Witt, R. (1996). "Crime, Deterrence and Unemployment in England and Wales: an
Empirical Analysis" Bulletin of Economic Research 48: 137-159.

How to obtain this report: Andrew von Hirsch, Anthony E. Bottoms, Elizabeth Burney, and P-O.
Wikstrom, Criminal Deterrence and Sentence Severity: An Analysis of Recent Research
(Oxford: Hart Publishing 1999). Pp. 63. ISBN 84113 0511 6 (paperback). Price £15. Hart
Publishing Ltd., 19 Whitehouse Road, Oxford OXL 4PA.
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