Deterrence and Juvenile Crime

"Americans have an abiding faith in punishment", asserts Anne Schneider in her introduction of Deterrence and Juvenile Crime. Dr. Schneider explores this "abiding faith" in her volume, overviewing past assumptions that punishment or merely the threat of punishment necessarily deters criminal behavior. She critically examines specific deterrence theories and presents the methodology used in her own research - research whose findings are often quite disruptive to those assumptions held so long. Using data from six experimental studies in U.S. cities, she finds that instilling a sense of citizenship is more important in reducing future criminal behavior than enhancing the certainty or severity of punishment. Beyond these results, the author raises some pointed issues to explain why perceptions of certainty and severity of punishment generally perform so inadequately in predicting subsequent offenses. A comparison between incarceration methods and community-based restitution programs, as well as the implications of policy, comprise a thorough discussion which focuses on the future and reflects upon the role of random experiments regarding issues of public policy initiatives.

Contenu

1 The Punishment Perspective.- Purpose.- An Overview.- Organization of the Book.- 2 Policy, Perceptions, and Criminal Behavior.- General Deterrence Research.- Aggregate Data Studies.- The Methodological Critique.- Macro-level Evaluation Research.- Recidivism and Specific Deterrence.- Deterrence and Labeling.- Restitution Programs.- Methodological Issues.- Perceptions of Legal Sanctions.- One-Wave Perceptual Research.- Second Generation Perceptual Research.- Sanctions and Perceptions.- Unresolved Issues.- 3 Rational Choice and Decision Heuristics.- Deterrence and Subjective Expected Utility Theory.- A Critique.- Modifying Rational Choice Theory.- A Decision Heuristics Approach.- Decision Heuristics.- The Decision Model.- 4 Juvenile Offenders: Methods and Measures.- Sources of Data.- Characteristics of the Interviewed Sample.- The Juvenile Offender Interviews.- The Official Records Check.- Management Information System Data.- Offenders and Offense Rates.- Measures of Offense Rates.- Comparing Alternative Measures of Recidivism.- Measuring Prior Offenses.- Perceptions and Values.- Intentions.- Certainty.- Severity.- Good Citizen Self-Image.- Remorse.- Fairness.- Experiences in the Juvenile Justice System.- Random Assignment.- Restitution and Probation.- Boise, Idaho.- Washington, D.C.- Clayton County, Georgia.- Oklahoma County.- Ventura, California.- Dane County, Wisconsin.- Program Success.- 5 The Perceptual Basis of Juvenile Crime.- Intentions to Reoffend.- Correlates of Intentions.- Multivariate Models of Intentions to Reoffend.- Post-Release Recidivism.- Correlates of Recidivism.- Multivariate Models of Perceptions and Recidivism.- Decision Making and Recidivism.- Methodological Issues.- Threshold Effects.- Good Citizen, Deterrence, Interactions.- Decay Effects.- The "Macho" Explanation.- Curvilinear Effects.- Deterrence and Experienced Offenders.- Deterrence and Type of Crime.- Discussion.- 6 Direct Effects of Programs on Recidivism.- Suppression Effects.- Program Effects.- Discussion of Suppression Effects.- Post-Program Comparisons.- Discussion of Direct Effects.- 7 Experiences, Perceptions, and Recidivism.- Programs and Perceptions.- Restitution vs. Incarceration.- Discussion.- Linking Program Experiences with Recidivism.- A Methodological Note.- Restitution vs. Incarceration.- Restitution vs. Probation.- Programmatic Restitution vs. Ad Hoc Restitution.- The Pooled Data.- Discussion.- 8 Conclusions.- Program Effects on Recidivism.- Effect of Perceptions on Recidivism.- Program Interventions, Perceptions, and Results.- References.- Author Index.