6.3.1 Early Origins of the Neoclassical Perspective

If you recall from reading Chapter 3, the classical school of criminology refers to the Enlightenment era philosophical writings of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers and social reformers such as Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham. They argued that humans are rational and self-serving and that punishment should have a utilitarian (as opposed to symbolic) purpose, such as deterrence or incapacitation. Because the ideas outlined in the classical school emerged prior to the rise of positivism (the dawn of scientific empirical research), these ideas were never considered scientific theories and not actually tested.

Also, once positivism emerged, the theories that were fashionable tended to focus on biological explanations of criminal behavior, which contradicted ideas about free will. For this reason, the scientific tools of early positive school criminologists like Cesare Lombroso were focused on measuring and comparing observable physical characteristics among criminals and noncriminals. As you learned in Chapter 3, there were many ethical and methodological issues with the studies of Lombroso and his contemporaries, and his ideas have been widely criticized in textbooks on criminology.

Unfortunately, the ideas of the classical school (such as deterrence and rational choice) were overlooked by social scientists until nearly two hundred years after they emerged. Starting in the 1960s, researchers such as Gibbs (1968) and others finally began to empirically test deterrence and rational choice theories. Neoclassical theories (a new look at the original classical theories) share elements of both the classical and positive schools because they highlight the role of free will, human agency, choice, and decision-making, while also emphasizing a scientific approach to evaluating their validity.

6.3.2 Deterrence Theory

According to the basic ideas of deterrence theory, if punishments are certain, swift, and proportionate to crime, then individuals will be scared away from criminal offending. Deterrence comes in two forms: general and specific. General deterrence refers to circumstances in which individuals are discouraged from committing crime due to their perceptions of the certainty, swiftness, and severity of legal consequences. Specific deterrence refers to circumstances in which individuals who were caught and punished are dissuaded from committing future offenses because of their personal experiences of those legal consequences.

Initially, researchers testing deterrence theory conducted studies relying on objective measures of apprehension and punishment. In other words, they looked at anonymous data of arrests and sentencing. These objective measures relied on administrative data from police or correctional agencies across numerous jurisdictions (e.g., states, cities) to measure the actual certainty and severity of punishment for different crimes. For example, Gibbs (1968) examined state-level data on the ratio of prison admissions to cases of reported homicide to measure the certainty of punishment, and the average length of prison sentences served for homicide to measure the severity of punishment. He then calculated the relationship between these measures of the certainty and severity of punishment compared to crime rates across the states.

This research revealed that, as predicted by deterrence theory, the severity and certainty of punishment were inversely related to crime rates; that is, states with higher certainty and severity of punishment had lower crime rates and states with lower certainty and severity of punishment had higher crime rates. This means it seemed to be working as theorized. Later research using similar methods confirmed a consistent deterrent effect of the certainty (or risk) of punishment on crime. However, many studies found that the severity of punishment was directly or positively correlated with crime rates—that is, states with higher severity of punishment had higher crime whereas states with lower severity of punishment had lower crime (Paternoster, 1987). This did not support deterrence theory and what the classical school claimed would work to deter crime. Even though this is the opposite of what deterrence theory would predict, it is important to remember that in Beccaria’s original work, he said that increasing the certainty of legal consequences was far more important in the administration of justice than making sure the punishment was proportionate to the crime.

Later research relied on perceptual measures of punishment, or what people thought would happen to them if they were caught for committing a crime. These studies surveyed individuals and asked them about their perceptions of the certainty (and sometimes the severity) of punishment for hypothetical crimes. For example, to measure the certainty of punishment, Saltzman and colleagues (1982) asked participants, “Out of the next 100 people in (city name) who commit ‘crime x,’ how many do you think will be arrested?” Researchers using such perceptual measures would then analyze their relationships to self-reported crime (or intentions to offend). Like the earlier research that relied on objective measures, this body of research has also generated support for the certainty effect predicted by deterrence theory (Nagin, 1998). And as predicted by Beccaria and consistent with the earlier studies, perceived severity of punishment has generally had a weak relationship to crime (Paternoster, 1987; Apel & Nagin, 2011).

Over the past few decades, numerous scholars have tested propositions of deterrence theory and even made revisions to the theory. Stafford and Warr (1993), for example, reconceptualized general and specific deterrence theory using concepts such as direct (experienced) and indirect (observed) punishment and punishment avoidance. In doing so, they highlighted that deterrence is a learning process based on direct and vicarious experiences of not only being punished but also getting away with crime. Similarly, Paternoster (1987) and others (like Saltzman et al., 1982), have shown that perceptions of the risk and severity of punishment may be due to personal experiences of punishment and punishment avoidance.

Deterrence theory has obvious relevance to the administration of justice and criminal justice policy. Deterrence theory was especially popular among politicians and others during the “tough on crime” era of the 1980s and 1990s and is still used in political campaigns today. During the 1980s and 1990s, voters, legislators, and policymakers across the United States rejected the idea of rehabilitating individuals who had committed crimes. Instead, they began advocating for tougher sentences, longer terms of imprisonment, and other harsh penalties (like mandatory minimum sentences) with deterrence as their justification. Programs such as “Scared Straight” were designed and implemented to scare delinquent youth by confronting them with the harsh extremes of imprisonment, whereas other correctional programs (like boot camps) were designed to be as mentally and physically unpleasant as possible.

Unfortunately, the record on such “deterrence”-oriented programs is quite clear: increasing the harshness of punishment is an ineffective and inefficient approach to deter crime (Apel and Nagin, 2011). In other words, it does not work. Specifically, the evidence shows that, on average, incarceration has either no effect or actually increases crime, casting doubt on specific deterrence (Nagin, Cullen, & Jonson, 2009). Also, boot camps, Scared Straight, and other juvenile “awareness” programs have been shown to be ineffective at best and criminogenic (crime-generating) at worst (Mackenzie, 2006; Petrosino, et al., 2003). They make kids more likely to commit crimes and to increase the frequency and violence of their criminal behavior.

Although it has often been deployed ineffectively in the past, there is some evidence that deterrence can work if designed appropriately. Think of cameras, patrol cars, or other tools that increase the perception of risk of receiving a citation for traffic violations such as speeding. As you have probably experienced, the presence of a camera or patrol car makes people slow down (at least until they are out-of-sight of the police car). This supports what Beccaria originally claimed – that the certainty of punishment is a far more effective deterrent than the severity of punishment. Other research has also shown that the certainty of apprehension has a stronger, larger, and more consistent impact on decreasing crime than the severity of punishment (Beccaria, 1764; Paternoster, 1987).

In addition to this, research shows that police crackdowns and other strategies that increase the certainty of apprehension are related to reduced crime. Probation programs that rely on frequent drug testing and swift, certain, and fair (SCF) sanctions for individuals who violate the conditions of their probation by using illicit drugs or alcohol (such as Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement) have been shown to reduce criminal reoffending (Kleiman, 2009).

In general, research has shown that increasing the actual or perceived risk of apprehension or punishment has at least a short-term deterrent effect on crime. Research is less clear about the longer-term effect of deterrence on crime, which we will discuss later in this chapter.

6.3.3 Rational Choice Perspective

Another prominent theory in the neoclassical school is the rational choice perspective rooted in the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. Like deterrence, rational choice has its origins in the classical school of criminology but was largely overlooked until the 1960s when it was revitalized by the economist Gary Becker (1968) and others. The main argument of the rational choice perspective is that offenders consider the potential costs and benefits of various courses of action before making decisions about whether to commit crimes. Costs include, but are not limited to, formal (legal) and informal (social disapproval) sanctions; and benefits include the variety of potential rewards from criminal behavior (like money, status, power).

In resurrecting the rational choice approach, Gary Becker (1968) argued that criminal behavior was like any other economic behavior, guided by the rational consideration of costs and benefits. The rational choice perspective was also elaborated in greater detail by Cornish and Clarke (1986) in their text The Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspectives on Offending. In it, they argued for a distinction between criminal involvement (factors leading to an individual’s “readiness” to commit crime) and criminal events (factors influencing the commission of specific offenses), a greater emphasis on situational factors surrounding the criminal incident (such as lower surveillance), and more crime-specific analyses.

A related concept to rational choice is the notion of thoughtfully reflective decision-making (TRDM) defined by Paternoster and Pogarsky (2009, p. 104–105). They said this TRDM is “the tendency of persons to collect information relevant to a problem or decision they must make, to think deliberately, carefully, and thoughtfully about possible solutions to the problem, apply reason to the examination of alternative solutions, and reflect back upon both the process and the outcome of the choice in order to assess what went right and what went wrong” (Paternoster & Pogarsky (2009, p. 104–105). In other words (and a much shorter description), TRDM “describes the process of good decision-making” (2009, p. 105).

This concept has been developed to understand the processes of how adults desist from crime (stop committing more crimes), which we will discuss more in the section on developmental, life-course criminology below. What this perspective shares with the rational choice perspective is a unique portrait of human nature, one which depicts individuals as conscious, thinking, reasoning agents—who act deliberately, making decisions and choices in their lives. This portrait of human nature contrasts with many sociological and psychological theories, which place greater emphasis on the influence of structural factors (like poverty) on individuals’ lives and decision-making process.

The rational choice perspective became more popular and influential because of the frequent finding in studies testing deterrence theory. Scholars found that informal sanctions were more influential at influencing self-reported intentions to commit crime than formal, legal consequences (Pratt et al., 2008). In other words, people place greater value on job loss, a tarnished reputation, and harm to their relationships with significant others, than the actual legal consequences of committing crime.

Although it shares the same assumptions about human nature as deterrence theory, the rational choice perspective offers a broader framework for understanding criminal decision-making because it considers a broader array of influences than just criminal justice apprehension and punishment. It has been successfully revised to explain crime from a situational (as well as individual) perspective. This has been particularly useful for the development of practical solutions to address crime. Specifically, situational crime prevention techniques have been used widely in the public and private sectors to increase the risk of apprehension. Studies examining the use of lighting and security cameras show that both factors are associated with modest reductions in crime, consistent with arguments made by the rational choice perspective.