Posted by I know that probably sounds completely backwards. It is the kind of statement that makes people want to argue with you. If you are like me, your first instinct might be to think that if we just throw the book at people, they will think twice. But the evidence? It does not really support that assumption, at least not in a clean, straightforward way.
Deterrence theory, at its core, rests on this idea that people weigh costs and benefits before committing a crime. If the expected cost of getting caught is high enough, the theory goes, they will simply choose not to act. Sounds reasonable, right? On paper, it makes perfect sense. But here is the thing that I have always struggled with when it comes to this theory.
it assumes a level of rational calculation that simply does not match how most crimes actually happen. I mean, have you ever met someone who was about to make a terrible decision and watched them run a detailed cost-benefit spreadsheet in their head? I certainly have not. A lot of offenses are impulsive, or opportunistic.
They are tied to a specific circumstance or a moment of poor judgment, rather than a careful calculation of the risks involved. This is where the debate between certainty and severity gets really interesting. When you actually look at the research comparing the two, you find a very consistent pattern. Time and time again, studies show that increasing the likelihood of getting caught and convicted does way more to reduce crime than increasing how harshly someone gets punished once they are caught.
One economic analysis of crime data that I came across recently really drove this home for me. It found that while the criminal justice system does have a substantial overall influence on crime, raising the risk of apprehension consistently outperforms raising the severity of the sentence. (And if you want to dig deeper into this, you should check out our earlier piece on social solidarity and institutional trust for a related angle on this).
It is a finding that lines up with something Gary Becker argued decades ago in his foundational economic model of crime. He basically treated criminal behavior as something that responds to the probability of punishment just as much as its magnitude. And you know what? It makes a lot of sense when you think about it from a psychological standpoint.
If people genuinely believed they would almost certainly get caught, that belief alone would likely do more to stop them than doubling a sentence length that they assume they will never actually have to face. Now, I do not want to give you the wrong impression here. None of this means that severity is completely irrelevant. It is not. A Minnesota House Research report that walked through decades of state data actually found that rising incarceration rates did coincide with falling crime rates.
But here is the catch, and it is a big one. The report is very careful to note that untangling cause from effect here is genuinely difficult. Why? Because incarceration also has a separate “incapacitating effect” that has nothing to do with deterrence at all. Think about it. Someone who is locked up simply cannot commit a new offense during that period, regardless of whether the sentence deterred anyone else from committing a crime in the first place.
So, where does all of this leave the punishment debate? After reading through all of this research, I think it leaves us with a policy implication that does not get nearly enough attention. Investing in faster, more reliable investigation and prosecution probably buys you more crime reduction per dollar than investing in longer sentences does. It is a less satisfying answer than just telling everyone to “get tougher on crime,” I will give you that. It definitely does not make for a great campaign slogan. But the data keeps pointing there anyway.
And honestly? I think that is a much more productive way to think about public safety. It is not about being soft on crime. It is about being smart about it. It is about creating a system where people actually believe they will be held accountable, rather than just hoping that the threat of a long prison sentence will scare them straight. Because at the end of the day, if people do not think they are going to get caught, what difference does the sentence even make?
References
Becker, G. S. (1968). Crime and punishment: An economic approach. Journal of Political Economy, 76(2), 169–217. https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c3625/c3625.pdf
Bun, M. J. G., Kelaher, R., Sarafidis, V., & Weatherburn, D. (2020). Crime, deterrence and punishment revisited. Empirical Economics, 59(5). https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/empeco/v59y2020i5d10.1007_s00181-019-01758-6.html
Minnesota House Research Department. (n.d.). Do criminal laws deter crime? Deterrence theory in criminal justice policy. https://www.house.mn.gov/hrd/pubs/deterrence.pdf