Perceptual Research on General Deterrence: A Critical Review

Williams, Kirk R.; Hawkins, Richard

doi:10.2307/3053466

Cited by 393 publications

(257 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Formal sanctions include Bloss of freedom or fines,^while informal sanctions Binclude censure by friends and family and loss of social and economic standing… [and] the magnitude of informal costs may be largely independent of the severity of legal consequences.M erely being arrested for committing a crime, then, may trigger the imposition of informal sanctions. Williams and Hawkins (1986) use the term Bfear of arrest^to label the deterrent effect of informal sanction cost. But again, what part of Bpolice presenceê xacerbates these perceptions of risk?…”

Section: Quantifying the Certainty Of Apprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Soft” policing at hot spots—do police community support officers work? A randomized controlled trial

2016

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Objectives To determine whether crime-reduction effects of increased police patrols in hot spots are dependent on the Bhard^threat of immediate physical arrest, or whether Bsoft^patrols by civilian (but uniformed) police staff with few arrest powers and no weapons can also reduce crime. We also sought to assess whether the number of discrete patrol visits to a hot spot was more or less important than the total minutes of police presence across all visits, and whether effects based on counts of crime would be consistent with effects on a Crime Harm Index outcome. Methods We randomly assigned 72 hot spots into 34 treatment units and 38 controls. Treatment consisted of increases in foot patrol by uniformed, unarmed, Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) who carry no weapons and hold few arrest powers beyond those of ordinary citizens. GPS-trackers on every PCSO and Constable in the city yielded precise measurements of all patrol time in all hot spots. Standardized mean differences (Cohen's d), OLS regression model, and Weighted Displacement Quotient are used to assess main effects, to model the interaction effect of GPS data with treatment, and to measure the diffusion-of-benefits of the intervention, respectively. Outcomes included counts of incidents as well as the Cambridge Crime Harm Index. Results As intended, patrol visits and minutes by Police Constables were equal across the treatment and control groups. The sole difference in policing between the treatments groups was in visits to the hot spots by PCSOs, in both the mean daily frequency of discrete visits (T = 4.65, C = 2.66; p ≤ .001) and total minutes across all visits (T = 37.41, J Exp Criminol (2016) 12:277-317 DOI 10.1007/s11292-016-9260-

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Section: Quantifying the Certainty Of Apprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Soft” policing at hot spots—do police community support officers work? A randomized controlled trial

2016

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“…In criminology, one of the most recognized functions of the law in general, and punishment in particular, is general deterrence (Bankston & Cramer, 1974;Bentham, 1970;Williams & Hawkins, 1986). This concept implies that punishments deter ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Punishments and rewards 4 individuals from performing a certain behavior mainly because it makes the behavior less attractive for an individual.…”

Section: The Expressive Function Of Punishmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This concept implies that punishments deter ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Punishments and rewards 4 individuals from performing a certain behavior mainly because it makes the behavior less attractive for an individual. However, it is also recognized that the law and punishment systems do more that only making breaking the law less attractive (Cooter, 1998;McAdams, 2000;Williams & Hawkins, 1986). It is argued that punishment systems have an expressive function as they signal what the underlying attitudes in society are and…”

Section: The Expressive Function Of Punishmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The difference between punishments and rewards in fostering moral concerns in social decision making

Mulder

2008

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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"In social decision making, punishing non-cooperation and rewarding cooperation may not only affect cooperation because of instrumental reasons. They may also evoke moral concerns regarding cooperation as they signal that cooperation is socially approved of and non-cooperation socially disapproved of. I argue that punishments do this to a greater extent than rewards as punishments communicate an obligatory rule and rewards communicate a voluntary rule. Indeed, the first experiment shows that, in a social dilemma, the concept of punishment increased cooperation and the concept of a reward did not. The second experiment showed that participants showed more disapproval towards an offender when there was a punishment for non-compliance than when there was a reward for compliance. These findings suggest that punishing non-cooperation more strongly foster moral concerns regarding cooperation than rewarding cooperation. Possible implications for internalizations are discussed." (author's abstract

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“…However, since an authority usually represents a larger society, a sanction may more generally signal that the group or larger society disapproves of the sanctioned behavior. As such, sanctions provide social validation for rules and may actually foster the moral conviction that the sanctioned behavior is ''bad'' (Williams and Hawkins 1986;Yanagida and Fujii 2004). This expressive function of sanctions may partly explain why sanctions steer behavior.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When sanctions convey moral norms

Mulder

2016

Eur J Law Econ

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Sanctions not only have the instrumental function of deterring people from undesired behavior but they also have the ability to convey moral norms. As such, they may create a moral motivation not to engage in the sanctioned behavior. This is desirable as this makes the success of a sanctioning system depend less on quality of enforcement. However, sanctions may not always succeed in conveying moral norms. In this paper, three conditions are highlighted that, in the psychology literature, have been empirically proven to influence whether a sanction succeeds to evoke moral norms. First, a sanction should not be regarded as a way to make up for the negative consequences of a transgression a sanction. So, they should be communicated in a retributive way rather than in a compensatory way. Second, as punishments communicate an obligatory rule and rewards communicate a voluntary rule, punishments are a better way to incur moral norms than rewards. Third, severe sanctions more strongly convey a moral norm than mild ones as long as these severe sanctions are not unreasonably severe, are installed by trustworthy authorities and in a fair way. The value of the moral expressive function of sanctions, as well as its drawbacks, are discussed.

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Perceptual Research on General Deterrence: A Critical Review

Cited by 393 publications

References 44 publications

“Soft” policing at hot spots—do police community support officers work? A randomized controlled trial

“Soft” policing at hot spots—do police community support officers work? A randomized controlled trial

The difference between punishments and rewards in fostering moral concerns in social decision making

When sanctions convey moral norms

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