Using Laboratory Experiments to Study Law and Crime - Chair of ...

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approaches are successful is far from clear.3Three prominent bodies of work explore the issue. Two of them, ecological studies (forthe pioneering work see Gibbs, 1968; Sellin, 1961; Tittle, 1969) and interrupted time seriesanalyses (see, for example, Sherman, 1990) find little if any effect of policies that increase theseverity of punishment. Work on specific crack-downs on crimes such as drug dealing showinitial deterrent effects that decline over time, such that crime rates rebound (MacCoun andReuter, 1998; Zimring et al., 2001). A third body of work uses surveys to ask respondents abouttheir perceptions of the risks and costs of being caught and their own self-reported deviant andcriminal behavior. These studies tend to find correlations between perceptions of punishmentand behavior (Cook, 1980; Grasmick and Bryjak, 1980; Jensen, 1969; Lochner, 2007; Matsueda,2006; Paternoster, 1987).Why the discrepancy in the findings? One answer is that there is a gap between theseverity of punishment demanded by policy changes and perceptions of punishment severityamong citizens. Nagin (1998) argues that “for crime control policy to be effective it must alterthese perceptions. Evidence on whether and how policy in current and prior time periods . . .affects sanction perceptions is fragmentary. Ecological and interrupted time-series studies havefocused only on the relationship of policy to crime. In doing so these studies have treated theintervening policy-to-perceptions linkage. . . as a black box. . . While these studies generally findthat policy has at least a temporary effect on crime and thereby somehow influences perceptions,the dearth of evidence on the policy-to-perceptions linkage is a major gap in knowledge. . . .[S]uch knowledge would be of great value in designing effective deterrence policies” (p. 7).Why might there be a gap between policy and perceptions? One possible reason is thatwhat is stated in policy may not actually be what is implemented. Some argue, for example, thatwhen punishments are too severe, they are less likely to be imposed. There are numerous reasonsfor this including that because it is often more costly to impose harsher punishments theresources to do so may not be available, and that people may be less willing to impose severepunishments for relatively minor offenses.15
In turn, when punishments are not imposed, potential offenders learn that risks are lowand that they can commit crimes without much fear of being caught (see, for example, argumentsthat inexperienced offenders tend to overestimate the effectiveness of law enforcement, cf.Minor and Harry, 1982; Tittle, 1980). Of course, this argument requires that criminals actuallylearn from their experience. There is some support for this assumption in the criminologicalliterature (see, for example, Horney and Marshall, 1992; Paternoster et al., 1985). Notably onestudy focuses on serious offenders – those incarcerated for felony offenses. In that study, thosewho had higher rates of arrest relative to criminal activity also reported higher risk perceptions.In other words, the study suggests that those who are arrested at a higher rate do update theirperceptions about the risks associated with engaging in crime.A second possible explanation for findings regarding the deterrent effect of severepunishment is that it is difficult to disentangle the direction of the causal arrow. The severity ofpunishment may reduce crime. But crime rates may also lead control agents to increase theseverity of punishment. This means that in order to determine the extent to which punishmentdeters crime, one must take into account the effects of crime rates on sanctioning severity . Thisis often very difficult to do.Rauhut’s approach (2009; 2010) acknowledges both the endogeneity problem identifiedby criminologists and the possibility that policy may not directly translate into enforcement, andexplicitly builds these possibilities into his theoretical argument. He relies on a mechanism thatsuggests that relatively simple principles of individual decision-making aggregate to producecounter-intuitive effects on the macro-level (Tsebelis 1989; 1990). The result of the mechanismthat Rauhut examines is that the incentives of one set of actors are transmitted to the other.More specifically, the underlying argument is based on the idea that potential offendersand law enforcement personnel have opposing interests. Citizens are more likely to commit acrime if they think they will not be caught, and less likely to commit a crime if they think theywill be caught. Control personnel have the opposite incentive structure; they try to detect crimeif they believe that people are actually committing crimes, but they do not make as much effort if16
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Page 29 and 30: REFERENCESAustin, James, John Clark
Page 31 and 32: Grasmick, Harold, and George J. Bry
Page 33 and 34: Rauhut, Heiko, and Ivar Krumpal. 20
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