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Does Punishment Deter?
Does Punishment Deter?
August 17, 1998
Does Punishment Deter Juvenile Crime?
"Researchers note a close connection between lack of punishment and the forming of criminal habits."
"There is an inverse correlation between expected punishment and the crime rate."
"Studies conclude that (1) a majority of serious crime is committed by habitual criminals and (2) punishment works, especially for juveniles."
"An initial contact with the criminal justice system causes most young people to desist from criminal acts."
Juvenile offenders, due to their youth and immaturity, pose a special challenge to the criminal justice system. In the past, many judges and social workers have argued for less stringent treatment of such offenders, with "prevention" taking precedence over detention. Thus the emphasis tends to be on so-called root causes and nonpunitive interventions. The results fail to bear out the hopes invested in such an approach. Researchers note a close connection between lack of punishment and the forming of criminal habits. They also note the effectiveness of punishment, especially for juveniles.
Crime as a Habit.
In one of the most comprehensive studies following offenders and the criminal justice system over time, University of Pennsylvania criminologist Marvin Wolfgang and his colleagues found that hard-core predators were a relatively small group of repeaters who rarely were punished. 32The Wolfgang group compiled arrest records up to the 30th birthday for two groups consisting of every male born and reared in Philadelphia in 1945 and in 1958. Their study, published in 1990, found that in both groups about 35 percent were arrested at least once for a nontraffic offense and nearly half of these never tangled with the law again. The group that turned 30 years old in 1988, however, was guilty of much more serious crime than the one that turned 30 in 1975. The two groups had two things in common: the hard-core predators were few in number and were rarely punished:
- Just 7 percent in each cohort (the top 20 percent of those arrested
at least once) committed two-thirds of all violent crimes, including three
out of four rapes and robberies.
- Members of this hard-core group in each cohort not only had five or
more criminal arrests before age 18 but also continued committing felonies
and got away with a dozen crimes for every arrest made.
- In 85 percent of the arrests for the 1958 group and 83 percent for the 1945 group, no charges were brought.
Many other studies of individuals have reached two major conclusions: (1) a majority of serious crime is committed by habitual criminals and (2) punishment works, especially for juveniles. 33
The situation in Denmark presents a contrast. Psychologist Sarnoff Mednick of the University of Southern California compared the records of thousands of Danish criminals with those in the Philadelphia study to confirm the effectiveness of punishment. He found that only 14 percent of those arrested four and five times in Philadelphia were punished, compared with 60 percent of those in Denmark. 34
The Effectiveness of Punishing Juveniles. The Wolfgang-Mednick research does more than point to a problem. It suggests the solution. Wolfgang's study found that, where court penalties were meted out in Philadelphia, they worked. For the group born in 1958, there was a .52 probability of rearrest if a court penalty was imposed. If the offender was handled more leniently, the arrest probability was .62.
"The big problem with our handling of criminals in America is that they're not punished," wrote Mednick. "People are usually surprised to hear that, because of all our prisons. But the fact is, by the time a guy makes his way to jail, that's very often his first punishment. And he usually has committed 15 offenses by then. He might have been arrested 10 times. In Philadelphia, the kids committed large numbers of offenses, and serious ones, and nothing happened. They just laughed. Our laws provide severe punishments, butthey deter not the criminals but the judges. They [the judges] don't want to throw a kid who's done some little thing in jail, so they just let him go." 35
As Eugene Methvin wrote, "a troublesome youngster typically has 10 or 12 contacts with the criminal justice system and many more undiscovered offenses before he ever receives any formal 'adjudication,' or finding of guilt, from a judge." 36
Charles Murray and Louis Cox studied 317 young criminals in Chicago during the mid-1970s. 37 The typical member of the sample was arrested at age 12 and then arrested another 13 times over the next three-and-a-half years before being committed to the Illinois Department of Corrections. The evaluation experiments revealed a strong "suppression effect"; that is, delinquents sentenced to jail and stronger interventions subsequently committed less crime than their counterparts who received softer, alternative treatment.
Economist Ann Dryden Witte pointed out that the police now routinely enforce laws against drunk driving, and courts usually punish offenders. As a result, drunk driving and the resources needed to enforce these laws have declined. 38 The same principles, she concluded, apply to predatory offenses: "Generally, criminals do respond to incentives, and altering these incentives can affect the level of crime and delinquency." Witte reexamined Wolfgang's Philadelphia cohort data for 19-to-26-year-olds in the 1945 cohort and found "robust evidence for a general deterrent effect flowing from criminal justice, especially police, resources." The results also suggested that "general deterrence may be strongest for individuals with limited previous contact with the criminal justice system." 39
Does Early Punishment Hurt or Help? Some sociologists believe that punishment has a "labeling" effect that outweighs the unpleasantness of incarceration and that this effect increases rather than decreases future criminal activity. Supposedly a convicted person says, "Well, they've labeled me a criminal, so I might as well commit more crime." Yet little evidence supports this theory. University of Maryland researchers Douglas Smith and Patrick Gartin studied the 325 males who were born in Racine, Wis., in 1949, lived there continuously until age 25 and had at least one police contact on criminal suspicion. They found evidence much more consistent with "specific deterrence" than with labeling. "Specific deterrence" means that an initial contact with the criminal justice system caused most young people to desist from criminal acts. Smith and Gartin also found that 68 of the group, or 20 percent, had six or more arrests, an indication that the worst of the worst commit most of the crimes. 40
Likewise, in his study of criminal justice in England, Charles Murray found that in 1954 the system operated on the assumption that the best way to keep crime down was to intervene early and sternly. Crime was very low, and the number of youths picked up by the police went down by about half as children matured from their early to their late teens. Today, however, a widespread assumption in England (as in the United States) is that youthful offenders need patience more than punishment. England's traditionally low crime rate is now very high, and in 1994 the number of youths picked up by the police roughly tripled from the early to the late teens. 41
Alternatives to Incarceration. The need to hold the individual juvenile criminal responsible for his actions does not make incarceration the sole option. For example, Anne L. Schneider found in six random-assignment experiments involving 876 adjudicated (convicted) delinquents in six American cities that victim restitution and incarceration both lowered reoffending while probation did not. 42 Victim restitution meant monetary restitution, community service or work to repay the victims. At some level of intensity and duration, inmates view intensive probation - much closer surveillance than the usual probation - as no less severe than prison time. 43
Rehabilitation: Preferable to Punishment?
"There is little evidence that rehabilitation works."
"Hardened criminals can reform themselves, but it is estimated that only 10 percent choose to do so."
Large, influential segments of the academic and legal communities advocate dealing with crime through rehabilitation of the offenders - a process culminating in his restoration to normal life. Believers in rehabilitation regard punishment as primitive or counterproductive. For example, Alvin Bronstein, former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, contended that releasing half the nation's prisoners would have little or no effect on the U.S. crime rate. 44
This school of thought abandons the philosophy of "Let the punishment fit the crime" for "Let the treatment fit the criminal." As Robert Bidinotto wrote, "The ordinary citizen believes individuals are responsible for what they do and thus should be held accountable for harm they do to others." By contrast, those who promote rehabilitation start with the premise that the criminal has little personal responsibility because he is "shaped by a wide variety of forces - biological, psychological, or social - over which he has little volitional control." 45 Rehabilitation contemplates that psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and other trained professionals can remold a criminal's thinking and outlook on life so that he will prefer legal behavior to criminal acts. This process takes a variety of forms, including counseling, psychiatric care and education.
Yet there is little evidence that rehabilitation works. 46 Soon after rehabilitation had become a principal theory of American corrections in the 1950s, criminal activity began to increase sharply. By the late 1960s, the theory was even more suspect because crime had risen to unprecedented levels and rehabilitation was not reducing recidivism. 47
Studies Question the Value of Rehabilitation.
The most devastating blow to the theory was Robert Martinson's exhaustive study. Martinson examined every available report on rehabilitation techniques published in English from 1945 to 1967, drawing on 231 studies. He found that "with few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism." 48 Relatively little comparable research has materialized to refute Martinson's analysis, although this has not been from want of effort. 49 A possible exception may be a modest superiority for the better-designed interventions in the outcomes of juveniles, and some researchers still believe that "appropriate correctional service" and treatment can cut recidivism sharply for other criminals, too. 50The Criminal Personality. A major obstacle to the success of rehabilitation is the existence of what could be called the criminal personality. Perhaps the most important work on this subject is the three-volume study by the late Samuel Yochelson, a physician, and Stanton Samenow, a practicing psychologist. 51 After interviewing hundreds of criminals and their relatives and acquaintances, the two researchers concluded that criminals (1) have control over what they do, freely choosing evil over good, (2) have distinct personalities, described in detail as deceitful, egotistical, myopic and violent and (3) make specific errors in thinking (52 such errors are identified).
On salvaging and reforming criminals, Yochelson and Samenow assert that the criminal must resolve to change and accept responsibility for his own behavior. Their cure stresses an analogy with Alcoholics Anonymous: "Once a criminal, always a criminal." Hardened criminals can reform themselves, but Samenow estimates that only 10 percent would choose to do so. He avoids the word "rehabilitation" when describing chronic criminals: "When you think of how these people react, how their patterns go back to age 3 or 4, there isn't anything to rehabilitate." 52
Problems with Rehabilitation. Careful studies of criminal rehabilitation continue to find little payoff. Peter Greenwood and Susan Turner of RAND, for example, studied an experimental program that delivered significantly more than the usual treatment services to juvenile delinquents. The controlled experiment showed in a one-year followup that (1) increasing supervision of offenders did not reduce recidivism and (2) there was no significant difference in the arrests or self-reported criminal activities of the experimental and the conventionally treated groups. 53
In Cincinnati, a well-publicized Community Corrections Partnership (CCP) program concentrated on improving the self-esteem and "sense of community" of black juvenile felons. A follow-up evaluation showed that the rearrest rate of this group was no better than that of a comparison group on regular probation. 54
In the case of street gang crime, Professor Malcolm Klein found that "typical liberal-based gang interventions have failed to manifest much utility. They appeal to our best instincts, but are too indirect, too narrow or else produce boomerang effects by producing increased gang cohesiveness." 55 Professor Klein also worried that "suppression approaches can produce precisely the same effect as earlier liberal approaches - namely, increased gang cohesion." 56
The truth is that changing criminal behavior by means other than deterrence is always problematical - so much so, perhaps, that prison authorities in Texas and elsewhere have initiated experimental "faith-based" programs for small groups of offenders. The idea is that religious transformation will make some impact - possibly a decisive one - on criminal behavior. The programs are too recent to evaluate.
A comprehensive scientific evaluation of hundreds of previous studies and prevention programs funded by the Justice Department found that "some programs work, some don't, and some may even increase crime." 57 The report was prepared by the University of Maryland's Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice for the Justice Department and mandated by Congress. 58 Among the programs that seemed to work were home visits in early infancy by nurses to reduce child abuse - a risk factor for later delinquency - and Head Start programs with home visits by teachers to impart parenting skills. Still, far too little is known and the report calls for 10 percent of all federal funding for these programs to be spent on independent evaluations of the impact of prevention programs.
Work as Rehabilitation. Voluntary self-help, in the form of work by prisoners, seems to have more of a chance of being productive. Work enables prisoners to earn wages and acquire marketable skills while learning individual responsibility and the value of productive labor. It also ensures that they are able to contribute to victim compensation and to their own and their families' support while they are in prison. A 1991 study by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons found that only 6.6 percent of federal inmates employed in prison industries violated their parole or were rearrested within a year of their release vs. 20 percent of nonemployed prisoners. 59