Scaring Offenders Straight

D eterrence is based on the notion that people consciously try to avoid pain and seek pleasure. It follows that by making a choice painful enough—such as the choice of crime—individuals will choose not to engage in the act. Across society as a whole, this perspective would predict that crime rates would be lowest in those places where offending evokes the most “pain” (or costs) and highest in those places where offending brings the most “pleasure” (or benefits). In short, deterrence is held to explain why individuals do or do not offend and to explain why certain places in society—called by criminologists “macro-level” or “ecological” units—have higher or lower crime rates. In turn, this way of thinking has clear implications for correctional policy and practice. If deterrence theory is correct, then to reduce crime, the correctional system should be organized to maximize the pain of crime and to minimize its benefits. Its whole aim should be to scare people straight—those who have engaged in crime (specific deterrence) and those who are thinking about committing crime (general deterrence). For the past three or four decades, the United States has been engaged in a costly experiment in which policy makers have bet literally billions of dollars that getting tough on crime—especially through mass incarceration—will reduce reoffending. When was the last time you have heard of any politician or judge campaign for office with the slogan, “I promise to get lenient on crime!” And would you vote for that public official? In contemporary America, Todd Clear (1994) has referred to this ongoing attempt to use the correctional system to be an instrument for inflicting pain as the penal harm movement (see also Currie, 1998). Deterrence theory is attractive because of its inherent intuitive appeal. This is the hot-stove phenomenon. When growing up, we learn that when we touch a hot stove top, we get burned. So, we don’t touch hot stoves. We are “deterred.” We decide, in short, not to do things that are like “hot stoves.” So, it seems like commonsense that if we could Deterrence