6. Sentencing and Deterrence

The impact of sentencing choice and deterrence strategies has important implications for public safety and cost to the criminal justice system (CJS) and its victims. Evidence from systematic reviews and meta-analytical studies provides valuable information about the relative effectiveness of these strategies. In this chapter, we use systematic principles to identify systematic reviews and meta-analytical studies of sentencing options and deterrence strategies. Five databases and two websites were searched between the date of database inception up until February 2012. Abstracts and papers were screened for inclusion and data extracted resulting in 22 publications (reporting on 16 reviews). The findings revealed 12 different sentencing reviews and four reviews using or applying deterrence theory. The results were categorized into “What Works”, “What’s Promising”, what showed “No evidence of any effect”, “Harmful interventions”, and interventions where the conclusions were “Uncertain”. Those that were classified as “what works” included adult drug courts where the majority (n = 8) of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been conducted. The largest body of evidence showed some promising findings but require additional research to ascertain firm conclusions. Interventions that were classified as promising included mental health courts (MHCs), post-booking schemes, FACT, jail-based courts, mental health and probation and parole schemes, and driving while intoxicated (DWI) initiatives. We remain “uncertain” about the effectiveness of juvenile drug courts and courts assessing DWI offenders, court-mandated domestic violence schemes, and use of the death penalty. The broad category of sentencing and deterrence, specifically in relation to sentence severity and boot camps, was found to have “no evidence of any effect”. Limitations of the literature included the external generalizability of the results beyond interventions in the USA.