Revisiting the Experiential Effect: How Criminal Offending Affects Juveniles’ Perceptions of Detection Risk

Abstract

Perceptual deterrence research has consistently found that criminal offending is inversely related to subsequent perceptions of the risk of being caught or arrested. This inverse relationship has been dubbed an “experiential effect,” reflecting the idea that people learn by committing (undetected) crimes that the detection or arrest risk is lower than first feared. The current study explores the validity of this experiential argument. It relies on self-report data from 3,259 adolescent participants in the panel study Crime in the modern City (Duisburg, Germany). We computed detection rates and risk perceptions, and used fixed effects models to investigate the proposed experiential learning process. Most findings support the experiential argument: (1) juvenile offenses were rarely detected by the police, (2) juveniles (especially those inexperienced with crime) tended to overestimate the detection risk, (3) juveniles reduced their risk perceptions when they committed crimes, (4) this reduction occurred primarily among those who overestimated the detection risk in periods when they were not committing crimes. However, the study also produced the surprising finding that the experiential effect seems to be short-lived: people appeared to return to initial risk perception levels when they stopped committing crimes. Overall, the results corroborate the experiential argument. However, they also indicate that the argument may need revision to account for the potential short-term nature of the experiential effect. This “ephemerality effect” is good news for policy, as lowered risk perceptions will in most cases only temporarily increase the likelihood of future delinquency.

Differential updating and morality: Is the way offenders learn from police detection associated with their personal morals?

“…If the adolescents committed crimes repeatedly instead of only once or twice in a given period, they reported reduced risk perceptions (3–9 offenses: β = −0.12 [−0.24 to 0.00]; ≥10 offenses: β = −0.20 [−0.33 to −0.07]). Like in previous research, the commission of more crimes thus was related to somewhat lower risk perceptions (e.g., Hirtenlehner and Wikström, 2017; Kaiser et al, 2022; Matsueda et al, 2006; Schulz, 2014). For all other covariates that include vicarious information about criminal experience, the model instead estimates small and statistically insignificant effects.…”

“…Most studies on deterrence (including the current one) examine the impact of the total number of arrests or the general arrest-crime ratio on (general or offense-specific) risk perceptions (e.g., Pogarsky et al, 2004, 2005; Schulz, 2014). They conduct this “global” analysis because arrests are a rare phenomenon (see Kaiser et al, 2022; Lochner, 2007), and the power to analyze their effects can be increased by aggregating arrests across different offense types. 20 A problem with this aggregation is, however, that deterrence theory and the underlying rational choice theories assume that deterrence processes operate (primarily) in an offense-specific manner (Anwar and Loughran, 2011; Paternoster, 1989; but see Stafford and Warr, 1993).…”

“…Most studies on deterrence (including the current one) examine the impact of the total number of arrests or the general arrest-crime ratio on (general or offense-specific) risk perceptions (e.g., Pogarsky et al, 2004Pogarsky et al, , 2005Schulz, 2014). They conduct this "global" analysis because arrests are a rare phenomenon (see Kaiser et al, 2022;Lochner, 2007), and the power to analyze their effects can be increased by aggregating arrests across different offense types.…”

Using risk of crime detection to study change in mechanisms of decision making.

“…But it could be the case that the long time periods between our observation phases impacted the results. For example, there is some literature that suggests the “experiential effect” of contact with the criminal justice “wears off” over time (Kaiser et al, 2022). Like a vaccine that loses potency, it could be that the boost to our risk perceptions is eventually overwhelmed by all the other inputs that life has to offer.…”