THE DETERRENT EFFECT OF PERCEIVED CERTAINTY AND SEVERITY OF PUNISHMENT REVISITED*

This paper synthesizes and extends recent criticisms of cross-sectional and panel studies of perceptual deterrence and then uses those criticisms to design a better cross-sectional study. A series of scenarios involving the noncompliance of a hypothetical plumber were posed to a sample of predominantly middle-aged administrators. The respondents were asked to estimate the probability that the noncompliance would be detected and, if detected, the probability that it would result in criminal prosecution. Respondents were also asked to project their own behavior if in the plumber's position. The results contrast sharply with prior findings, especially of the panel studies. Not only do perceptions of detection risk play an important role in deterring tax noncompliance, but fear of criminal prosecution appears to be a powerful deterrent.     

LINKING ACTUAL AND PERCEIVED CERTAINTY OF PUNISHMENT:

An untested proposition in deterrence theory is that people's perceptions of the certainty of arrest in a community are influenced by their exposure to information about crimes committed in the community which have and have not resulted in arrest. We examine the effects of two sources of information on people k perceptions of the certainty of arrest in a community: (1) newspaper crime stories and (2) personal experiences with crimes and the personal experiences of one's acquaintances. Only the latter appear to influence people's estimates of the certainty of arrest.     

TESTING THE DETERRENT EFFECT OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: A Reduced Form Approach

There are three principal alternative explanations for the dramatic rise in crime over the last 15 years: (I) the retirement of capital punishment; (2) socioeconomic trends; (3) random social shocks starring with the Kennedy assassination in 1963. This article reports a statistical test of the second of these explanations. On balance, the results are unfavorable to it. The statistical test involves the extrapolation of a predicted homicide rate obtained from a reduced form regression equation estimated over the capital punishment era into the postcapital punishment era. The predicted homicide rate (based on socioeconomic variables) continues the long-run secular decline pattern after 1962, while the actual homicide rote rises precipitously. The article concludes with a brief argument that the capital punishment moratorium seems somewhat more plausible than the social shock theory as an explanation for the crime increase.     

PROTESTANT FUNDAMENTALISM AND THE RETRIBUTIVE DOCTRINE OF PUNISHMENT*

In Gregg v. Georgia in 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that public opinion, including the public's presumed desire for retribution, can be a legitimate basis for penal policy. Subsequently, the retributive doctrine has guided sentencing reform across the nation. But variation among the public in support for retribution as the goal of punishment and the effects of religion in shaping public sentiments about punishment have received little attention from researchers. Drawing from recent work on attribution theory and religion, this paper proposes and reports evidence that public support for the retributive doctrine is closely linked to affiliation with fundamentalist Protestant denominations and fundamentalist religious beliefs. The normative implications of such a connection are addressed.     

FELONY MURDER AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: AN EXAMINATION OF THE DETERRENCE QUESTION

A proper test of the deterrent effect of the death penalty must consider capital homicides. However, the criterion variable in most investigations has been total homicides—most of which bear no legal or theoretical relationship to capital punishment. To address this fundamental data problem, this investigation used Federal Bureau of Investigation data for 1976–1987 to examine the relationship between capital punishment and felony murder, the most common type of capital homicide. We conducted time series analyses of monthly felony murder rates, the frequency of executions, and the amount and type of television coverage of executions over the period. The analyses revealed occasional departures (for vehicle theft and narcotics killings) from the null hypotheses. However, on balance, and in line with the vast majority of capital punishment studies, this investigation found no consistent evidence that executions and the television coverage they receive are associated significantly with rates for total, index, or different types of felony murder.     

ORIGINS OF INTEREST IN THE PRIVATIZATION OF PUNISHMENT: THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

Interest in the privatization of punishment has increased substantially during the past decade. The rising costs of incarceration and steady increases in the incarcerated population have stimulated governmental enthusiasm for the transfer of certain correctional responsibilities to the private sector. Advocates and critics of privatization differ regarding the ultimate benefits of private sector participation in the correctional process. In an effort to shed light on some of the conflicting claims of advocates and critics, this paper analyzes the origins of interest in privatization in America during both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The analysis suggests that scrutiny of the historical record may provide insights that will be useful in the development of policy that can successfully anticipate and avoid hazards to the success of correctional privatization.     

JAPANESE AND AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ABOLITION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Japanese and Americans are compared in terms of the extent each sample believes that capital punishment should be abolished, Blacks and white American females are more likely to approve of the abolition of capital punishment. No differences by sex were found in the Japanese sample. For both countries, those who are younger and more educated hold less punitive attitudes The Japanese as a whole are less likely than Americans to approve of the abolition of capital punishment. Problems found in cross-cultural secondary analysis are discussed.     

RISK PERCEPTIONS AMONG SERIOUS OFFENDERS: THE ROLE OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT*

Previous research on the perceived certainty of punishment indicates that individuals with experience in committing crimes perceive arrest as less certain than do those without such experience. Studies assessing the influence of experiencing formal sanctions on perceptions of risk have produced mixed results. Most studies however, have not considered the experience of sanctions in conjunction with the frequency of criminal behavior. With a sample of 1,046 incarcerated felons, we examined relationships among perceived risk of arrest, arrest history, and frequency of committing crimes. Our findings suggest that it is important to measure the ratio of arrests to crimes and that perceptions of risk are formed in a manner consistent with a rational choice perspective, even in a sample of serious offenders.     

POLICE KILLINGS AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: THE POST-FURMAN PERIOD

In view of (1) escalating national attention and political and judicial activity centering on capital punishment during recent years and (2) concomitant changes in police killing rates, this paper investigates the impact of the death penalty on rates of lethal assaults against the police for the post- Furman period, 1973–1984. In keeping with recent investigations of deterrence and general homicides, multiple regression is used as a means of controlling for the influence of possible confounding variables in examining the capital punishment/police killings relationship. Consistent with previous investigations, the present analysis provides no indication that our national return to capital punishment since Furman has had a systematic impact on police homicides. Law enforcement officers are not afforded an added measure of protection in death penalty compared to abolitionist states, nor is there anything but a chance association between the rate of police killings and the level of use of the death sentence for convicted murderers.     

THE IMPACT OF FAMILY STRUCTURE AND QUALITY ON DELINQUENCY: A COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL FACTORS*

Despite the plethora of studies of broken homes, multivariate studies comparing the effects of the broken home and other theoretically relevant measures of the quality of family life are rare. This study examines the family structure versus family function issue by testing the comparative effects on self-reported delinquency of family structure and jive measures of family function. Five types of delinquency are considered. The data were obtained from a 1980 survey of 152 high school students in a small midwestern town. Item analysis and data reduction techniques were employed to construct six family quality indices and jive delinquency indices. Two types of family structure were examined: presence of both biological parents in the home v. other and single- v. two-parent homes. Multivariate analyses controlled for the effects of age and gender. Bivariate tests of the relationships between broken homes and delinquency were not significant, except for a moderate relationship between broken homes and status offenses. In addition, a bivariate relation between single-parent homes and delinquency was observed for status offenses only. Other forms of family dysfunction all were significantly related to overall delinquency and to status offenses. Moreover, several measures of family quality evidenced significant bivariate relationships to property offenses. violent offenses, and drug offenses. The importance of the broken home was further diminished when the direct effects of broken homes and home quality were examined in multivariate tests. Regression equations showed home quality and gender, rather than family structure, to be the more important determinants of delinquency. The family structure coefficient was significant in only 1 of 10 tests, a regression of broken home and home quality on status offenses. Efforts to expand the analysis to identify specific areas of family dysfunction were unenlightening.     

THE INTERACTION OF RACE, GENDER, AND AGE IN CRIMINAL SENTENCING: THE PUNISHMENT COST OF BEING YOUNG, BLACK, AND MALE

Prior theory and research on sentencing oversimplify the role of race, gender and age in judicial decision making. In this article we present a "focal concerns" theory of judicial decision making to frame hypotheses regarding the effects on sentencing of these social statuses, both singly and in combination. Analyzing statewide sentencing outcomes in Pennsylvania for 1989–1992, we find that, net of controls: (1) young black males are sentenced more harshly than any other group, (2) race is most influential in the sentencing of younger rather than older males, (3) the influence of offender's age on sentencing is greater among males than females, and (4) the main effects of race, gender, and age are more modest compared to the very large differences in sentencing outcomes across certain age-race-gender combinations. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering the joint effects of race, gender, and age on sentencing, and of using interactive rather than additive models.     

GENDER AND SOUTHERN PUNISHMENT AFTER THE CIVIL WAR*

Recent scholarship raises two questions about the historical relationship between gender and official responses to criminality. First, to what extent has the formal social control of women changed in the past two centuries? Second, to what extent can changes in the presence of women within the criminal justice system be traced to the same factors that account for the changing presence of men? To address these questions, I focus on women incarcerated for felonies in a southern state (Georgia) between 1870 and 1940. Along with a comparable sample of male offenders, this population forms the basis of a time-series analysis that compares, and seeks to account for, trends in admission rates. The analysis yields little evidence that women disappeared from formal system of punishment. Instead, there were gender similarities in punishment trends and in explanations for those trends. Concluding the paper is a discussion of its implications for further research on gender differences in punishment.     

A CROSS‐CULTURAL EXAMINATION OF THE LINK BETWEEN CORPORAL PUNISHMENT AND ADOLESCENT ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR*

Several studies with older children have reported a positive relationship between parental use of corporal punishment and child conduct problems. This has lead some social scientists to conclude that physical discipline fosters antisocial behavior. In an attempt to avoid the methodological difficulties that have plagued past research on this issue, the present study used a proportional measure of corporal punishment, controlled for earlier behavior problems and other dimensions of parenting, and tested for interaction and curvilinear effects. The analyses were performed using a sample of Iowa families that displayed moderate use of corporal punishment and a Taiwanese sample that demonstrated more frequent and severe use of physical discipline, especially by fathers. For both samples, level of parental warmth/control (i.e., support, monitoring, and inductive reasoning) was the strongest predictor of adolescent conduct problems. There was little evidence of a relationship between corporal punishment and conduct problems for the Iowa sample. For the Taiwanese families, corporal punishment was unrelated to conduct problems when mothers were high on warmth/control, but positively associated with conduct problems when they were low on warmtwcontrol, An interaction between corporal punishment and warmth/Wcontro1 was found for Taiwanese fathers as well. For these fathers, there was also evidence of a curvilinear relationship, with the association between corporal punishment and conduct problems becoming much stronger at extreme levels of corporal punishment. Overall, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that it is when parents engage in severe forms of corporal punishment, or administer physical discipline in the absence of parental warmth and involvement, that children feel angry and unjustly treated, defy parental authority, and engage in antisocial behavior.     

DETERRENCE, BRUTALIZATION, AND THE DEATH PENALTY: ANOTHER EXAMINATION OF OKLAHOMA'S RETURN TO CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

A replication and extension of a weekly ARZMA analysis (1989–1991) by Cochran et al. (1994), which appeared in Criminology, confirms that Oklahoma's return to capital punishment in 1990, after a 25-year moratorium, was followed by a significant increase in killings involving strangers. Moreover, a multivariate autoregressive analysis, which includes measures of the frequency of executions, the level of print media attention devoted to executions, and selected sociodemographic variables, produced results consistent with the brutalization hypothesis for total homicides, as well as a variety of different types of killing involving both strangers and nonstrangers. No prior study has shown such strong support for the capital punishment and brutalization argument. However, there is also a suggestion of a possible lagged deterrent effect for the level of media coverage of executions for nonfelony murders involving strangers. The analysis indicates that the impact of capital punishment in Oklahoma during the 1989–1991 period was much more extensive than suggested by the earlier study. Recommendations are made for further research examining additional jurisdictions and time periods to determine the generalizability of the patterns found for Oklahoma.