Studying the reach of deterrence: Can deterrence theory help explain police misconduct?
Introduction
Of all social control theories generally, and criminological theories in particular, perhaps none has received as sustained an amount of research attention as the deterrence framework. Under deterrence theory, an increase in the certainty, severity, or celerity of potential punishment for a contemplated offense increases its perceived costliness to the actor, and can thereby discourage it Andenaes, 1974, Beccaria, 1963, Gibbs, 1975, Tittle, 1980, Zimring & Hawkins, 1973.
Although early research on deterrence employed macro-level data, more recent research employed surveys that often query individuals directly about hypothetical offending opportunities (cf. Nagin & Paternoster, 1993, Nagin & Paternoster, 1994, Piquero & Tibbetts, 1996, Saltzman et al., 1982). This method generated detailed information about the contextual and contingent nature of offending decisions, consistent with calls for a more situationally-oriented understanding of criminal events (cf. Cornish & Clarke, 1986). That said, perceptual studies were criticized for relying on “convenience samples” of college students who, it was argued, did not necessarily reflect the wider population of would-be offenders Jensen et al., 1978, Williams & Hawkins, 1986. In response, researchers began to investigate non-college student populations (cf. Decker et al., 1993, Makkai & Braithwaite, 1994, Simpson & Piquero, 2002). These studies largely corroborated perceptual findings that deterrence considerations were important to crime decision-making, at least for some offenses and some individuals.
Moreover, research recently expanded the scope of deterrence theory in at least two respects. First, research established that the deterrent potential of informal (extralegal) sanctions threats, such as guilt, shame, and embarrassment, often exceeds that of formal (legal) sanction threats Grasmick & Bursik, 1990, Williams & Hawkins, 1986. Second, research found that personal characteristics affected the deterrence process in a variety of ways. For example, individuals who were impulsive or who lacked self-control were disproportionately crime prone, in part, because they were less influenced by sanction threats Nagin & Paternoster, 1994, Nagin & Pogarsky, 2001, Piquero & Tibbetts, 1996.
This study examined the reach and/or scope of this refined version of deterrence theory. In so doing, the article applies the deterrence framework to police misconduct, a topic not heretofore subject to perceptual deterrence work. Certainly, scholars investigated police misconduct (cf. Greene et al., 2004, Lundman, 1980, Sherman, 1974, Walker, 2001), but this area of research was slow to develop and apply formal theories of police deviance Hickman et al., 2001, Kappeler et al., 1994, Sherman, 1992. Consequently, empirical research on police misconduct remains underdeveloped relative to other criminological research.
This study administered a survey about police misconduct to several hundred police officers from a mid-sized southwestern United States police department. The study examined the extent to which formal and informal sanction threats influenced officers' decisions to commit misconduct, and whether these processes were conditional on the impulsivity and prior punishment experience of respondents.
Section snippets
Explaining police misconduct
Police work entails a range of decisions that affect the daily lives of ordinary citizens. For example, police officers stop, frisk, and arrest individuals, assess the strength of evidence, prioritize investigations and patrols, staff squads and stations, and decide which areas to patrol Davis, 1975, Macintyre & Prenzler, 1999, Walker, 1992. In sum, “policing requires officers to exercise authority over others and to engage in a variety of activities that require confidentiality and trust; the
Enter deterrence
The research above provided the point of departure from which this study extended the application of extant criminological theory to police misconduct. In particular, this study had several objectives. First, applying extant theory to police behavior will further inform the debate about whether a unified theoretical framework can explain the range of criminal and socially sanctioned behaviors, or whether different types of transgressions require separate theories (Cornish & Clarke, 1986).
Current focus
Based on the foregoing theoretical discussion, this study examined several research questions. On a general level, the study investigated whether police officers were influenced by deterrence considerations. On the one hand, as a general theory of law, social control, and crime, deterrence theory does not distinguish between crime types or categories of offenders. Instead, the theory applies straightforward principles of human motivation to the study of all socially sanctioned behaviors. On the
Sample
The study was conducted with a sample of police officers from a mid-sized southwestern United States police department. Access to the subject population was strictly conditional on officer participation being both voluntary and anonymous. Blank surveys were given to the captain, who in turn distributed them to several shift sergeants. Before the next shift, each sergeant announced the opportunity to participate in the study. Thereafter, a stack of blank surveys was left on a table next to a
Results
Table 1 contains descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations for all study variables. Most of the theoretical relationships postulated in the earlier discussion were supported by the bivariate correlation coefficients in Table 1. In both scenarios, all three deterrence variables, measuring the perceived certainty, severity, and celerity of punishment, related negatively to the offending intention. Moreover, in both scenarios, the magnitude of the negative association between offending
Discussion
This study examined the extent to which deterrence theory could explain two types of police misconduct. To accomplish this task, this study used data from a sample of police officers in a mid-sized, southwestern police department. This type of sample offered several benefits. First, it was useful for policy purposes to know whether police officers had inclinations with respect to deterrence that were similar to those of individuals that police officers were charged to enforce the law against.
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