U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention ojjdp.gov

Robert L. Listenbee, Administrator

Pathways to Desistance

How and why do many serious 

adolescent offenders stop offending 

while others continue to commit crimes? 

This series of bulletins presents findings 

from the Pathways to Desistance study, 

a multidisciplinary investigation that 

attempts to answer this question. 

Investigators interviewed 1,354 

young offenders from Philadelphia 

and Phoenix for 7 years after their 

convictions to learn what factors (e.g., 

individual maturation, life changes, and 

involvement with the criminal justice 

system) lead youth who have committed 

serious offenses to persist in or desist 

from offending. 

As a result of these interviews and a 

review of official records, researchers 

have collected the most comprehensive 

dataset available about serious adolescent 

offenders and their lives in late 

adolescence and early adulthood. 

These data provide an unprecedented 

look at how young people mature out 

of offending and what the justice system 

can do to promote positive changes in 

the lives of these youth.

Studying Deterrence Among 

High-Risk Adolescents

Thomas A. Loughran, Robert Brame, Jeffrey Fagan, Alex R. Piquero, Edward P. Mulvey, 

and Carol A. Schubert

Highlights

The Pathways to Desistance study followed more than 1,300 serious juvenile 

offenders for 7 years after their conviction. In this bulletin, the authors present 

some key findings on the link between perceptions of the threat of sanctions 

and deterrence from crime among serious adolescent offenders. Selected 

findings are as follows:

• There was no meaningful reduction in offending or arrests in 

response to more severe punishment (e.g., correctional placement, 

longer stays).

• Policies targeting specific types of offending may be more effective 

at deterring youth from engaging in these specific offenses as 

opposed to general policies aimed at overall crime reduction.

• In response to an arrest, youth slightly increased their risk 

perceptions, which is a necessary condition for deterrence.

• Creating ambiguity about detection probabilities in certain areas or 

for certain types of crime may have a deterrent effect by enhancing 

the perceived risk of getting caught. 

August 2015
AUGUST 2015

2 Juvenile Justice Bulletin

Studying Deterrence Among High-Risk Adolescents

Thomas A. Loughran, Robert Brame, Jeffrey Fagan, Alex R. Piquero, Edward P. Mulvey, and Carol A. Schubert

Although deterrence is one of the foundations of the 

juvenile justice and criminal justice systems, little is 

known about how the fear or threat of sanctions affects 

the decisionmaking process among adolescent offenders. 

These youth are an important focus of research attention, 

given their disproportionate rates of participation in 

serious crime, the diversity of their offending patterns 

and developmental backgrounds, and the strong 

likelihood of desistance as they transition to adulthood. 

Policymakers who understand the role of deterrence in a 

broader context of developmental change and life course 

transitions have important information as they consider 

how to respond to crimes that adolescents commit and 

respond to the offenders themselves.

Yet, researchers and policymakers know very little about 

how serious adolescent offenders perceive the threat or 

experience of punishment, which threats or experiences 

affect them, and in what ways. Consequently, these 

threats or experiences are important factors in youth’s 

decisions to persist in or desist from crime (Anwar and 

Loughran, 2011; Paternoster, 1987; Nagin, 1998). In this 

bulletin, the authors consider—based on their review of 

recent evidence from the Pathways to Desistance study, 

a multisite, longitudinal sample of adolescent (primarily 

felony) offenders (see sidebar, “About the Pathways 

to Desistance Study”)—several questions regarding 

how juvenile offenders assess sanctions and the threat 

of sanctions.1 Unlike most other research on serious 

adolescent offenders, the Pathways study draws from both 

interviews and official records from adolescence and early 

adulthood. The authors examine several questions related 

to deterring juveniles: 

● Do their offending and punishment experiences mold 

offenders’ perceptions of risks and consequences of 

offending (which relate directly to their propensity to 

be deterred from crimes)?

KEY TERMS

Certainty effect: the negative correlation of crime 

and deviance with the risk or probability of being 

sanctioned.

Detection probability: a “certainty effect” of criminal or 

deviant activity being discovered.

Deterrence: preventing a particular act or event by 

increasing the perceived risk of detection or sanction.

Risk perception: a subjective assessment of the 

detection probability.

Threat of sanctions: the calculated risk or “cost” of 

punishment when deciding whether to commit a crime.

● Does placing offenders in a correctional facility have any 

tangible deterrent effects?

● Does longer placement have a more deterrent effect on 

juveniles? 

The authors conclude with a discussion of directions 

for future applied research into deterrence and consider 

some broader implications for juvenile justice policy and 

practice. 

Background

The criminological literature on deterrence (Beccaria, 

1985; Zimring and Hawkins, 1973; Andenaes, 1974) 

is rooted in the belief that when offenders perceive 

criminal sanctions will be certain, severe, and swift, they 

will reduce their criminal activity because they perceive 
Juvenile Justice Bulletin 3 

interview for the study, 50 percent of these adolescents 

were in an institutional setting (usually a residential treatment 

center); during the 7 years after study enrollment, 87 percent 

of the sample spent some time in an institutional setting.

Interview Methodology 

Immediately after enrollment, researchers conducted a 

structured 4-hour baseline interview (in two sessions) 

with each adolescent. This interview included a thorough 

assessment of the adolescent’s self-reported social 

background, developmental history, psychological 

functioning, psychosocial maturity, attitudes about illegal 

behavior, intelligence, school achievement and engagement, 

work experience, mental health, current and previous 

substance use and abuse, family and peer relationships, use 

of social services, and antisocial behavior. 

After the baseline interview, researchers interviewed study 

participants every 6 months for the first 3 years, and annually 

thereafter. At each followup interview, researchers gathered 

information on the adolescent’s self-reported behavior and 

experiences during the previous 6-month or 1-year reporting 

period, including any illegal activity, drug or alcohol use, and 

involvement with treatment or other services. Youth’s selfreports about illegal activities included information about the 

range, the number, and other circumstances of those activities 

(e.g., whether or not others took part). In addition, the followup 

interviews collected a wide range of information about changes 

in life situations (e.g., living arrangements, employment), 

developmental factors (e.g., likelihood of thinking about 

and planning for the future, relationships with parents), and 

functional capacities (e.g., mental health symptoms). 

Researchers also asked participants to report monthly about 

certain variables (e.g., school attendance, work performance, 

and involvement in interventions and sanctions) to maximize 

the amount of information obtained and to detect activity 

cycles shorter than the reporting period. 

In addition to the interviews of study participants, for the first 

3 years of the study, researchers annually interviewed a family 

member or friend about the study participant to validate the 

participant’s responses. Each year, researchers also reviewed 

official records (local juvenile and adult court records and FBI 

nationwide arrest records) for each adolescent. 

Investigators have now completed the last (84-month) set 

of followup interviews, and the research team is analyzing 

interview data. The study maintained the adolescents’ 

participation throughout the project: At each followup 

interview point, researchers found and interviewed 

approximately 90 percent of the enrolled sample. Researchers 

have completed more than 21,000 interviews in all.

ABOUT THE PATHWAYS TO DESISTANCE STUDY

The Pathways to Desistance study is a multidisciplinary, 

multisite longitudinal investigation of how serious juvenile 

offenders make the transition from adolescence to adulthood. 

It follows 1,354 young offenders from Philadelphia County, PA, 

and Maricopa County, AZ (metropolitan Phoenix), for 7 years 

after their court involvement. This study has collected the 

most comprehensive dataset currently available about serious 

adolescent offenders and their lives in late adolescence and 

early adulthood. It looks at the factors that lead youth who 

have committed serious offenses to persist in or desist from 

offending. Among the aims of the study are to: 

● Identify initial patterns of how serious adolescent offenders 

stop antisocial activity.

● Describe the role of social context and developmental 

changes in promoting these positive changes.

● Compare the effects of sanctions and interventions in 

promoting these changes. 

Characteristics of Study Participants

Enrollment took place between November 2000 and March 

2003, and the research team concluded data collection in 

2010. In general, participating youth were at least 14 years 

old and younger than 18 years old at the time of their study 

index petition; 8 youth were 13 years old and 16 youth were 

older than age 18 but younger than 19 at the time of their 

index petition. The youth in the sample were adjudicated 

delinquent or found guilty of a serious (overwhelmingly felonylevel) violent crime, property offense, or drug offense at their 

current court appearance. Although felony drug offenses are 

among the eligible charges, the study limited the proportion 

of male drug offenders to no more than 15 percent; this 

limit ensures a heterogeneous sample of serious offenders. 

Because investigators wanted to include a large enough 

sample of female offenders—a group neglected in previous 

research—this limit did not apply to female drug offenders. 

In addition, youth whose cases were considered for trial in 

the criminal justice system were enrolled, regardless of the 

offense committed. 

At the time of enrollment, participants were an average of 16.2 

years old. The sample was 84 percent male and 80 percent 

minority (41 percent black, 34 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent 

American Indian/other). For approximately one-quarter (25.5 

percent) of study participants, the study index petition was 

their first petition to court. Of the remaining participants (those 

with a petition before the study index petition), 69 percent 

had 2 or more prior petitions; the average was 3 in Maricopa 

County and 2.8 in Philadelphia County (exclusive of the 

study index offense). At both sites, more than 40 percent of 

the adolescents enrolled were adjudicated of felony crimes 

against persons (i.e., murder, robbery, aggravated assault, 

sex offenses, and kidnapping). At the time of the baseline 
4 Juvenile Justice Bulletin

the risks and costs of sanctions will 

exceed the returns from crime. Becker 

(1968) suggested that offenders base 

their decisions to commit crime on the 

combined effects of three dimensions 

of deterrence, each of which forms part 

of a “sanction regime”—the risks of 

arrest, the likelihood of conviction, and 

the costs of punishment (see figure 1). 

To be effective, the combined effects of 

the sanction regime must neutralize or 

exceed the rewards of crime. Acting together, sanction 

regimes set both the risks and conditional costs of crime 

and—with timely responses that connect the crime to the 

costs—they create a deterrent threat. Much of modern 

deterrence theory can be traced back to Becker’s design. 

Since Becker (1968), deterrence theorists typically have 

distinguished between two types of deterrence: for society 

as a whole (general deterrence) and for individuals (specific 

deterrence). General deterrence is predicated on the idea 

of vicarious learning. According to this perspective, clearly 

announced laws backed up with aggressive enforcement, 

prosecution, and punishment send a message to the 

community that crime will not be tolerated. Potential 

offenders—who learn from the experiences of others—

will mostly choose not to offend. On the other hand, 

specific deterrence is predicated on the idea of experiential 

learning. This perspective emphasizes the importance of 

one’s own prior offending and sanction experiences in 

framing the costs and benefits of criminal involvement.

What is clear is that the extent to which offenders apply 

decisionmaking processes varies. Recidivism rates of 

previously sanctioned juvenile and adult offenders are 

high; however, they are not 100 percent (Nagin, 1998). 

Some offenders persist, whereas others desist. Desistance 

itself takes several forms. For some, it is spontaneous and 

abrupt; others desist incrementally over time; some desist 

for varying time intervals; and still others desist from 

serious crime by shifting to less serious (and potentially 

less costly) crimes. Perhaps due to differences in maturity, 

cognitive impairment, prior experiences, and other 

possible factors, some individuals “don’t get it” when 

they are punished for criminal activity, whereas others do 

and still others “get it eventually.” In addition, some may 

“get it” but decide to continue offending in the face of 

substantial risks of punishment.

The psychological literature on risk, for example, indicates 

that a developmental gap in the maturation of the 

cognitive-control system can help explain some adolescent 

risk behaviors. It has been well established that the logical 

reasoning capabilities of adolescents are comparable to 

those of adults by age 15; essentially, adolescents and 

adults are equally able to perceive risk and its potential 

effects (Reyna and Farley, 2006; Millstein and HalpernFelsher, 2002; Steinberg, 2007). However, psychosocial 

maturation processes (e.g., impulse control, emotion 

regulation, future orientation, delayed gratification, 

resistance to peer influence) continue to develop into 

young adulthood (Steinberg, 2004). As such, it is believed 

that ongoing psychosocial development weakens the 

fully mature logical reasoning abilities of adolescents and 

results in higher vulnerability for engaging in risk-taking 

behaviors (Steinberg, 2007).

Results from the Pathways study address two of the three 

prongs of the deterrence equation—the certainty and 

severity hypotheses. The idea behind the first hypothesis 

is that more certain punishment should reduce crime 

because the greater a person’s perceived likelihood that 

he or she will be caught for committing a crime, the 

less willingness he or she should have to engage in that 

crime. The severity hypothesis is based on the assumption 

that the stronger the penalty associated with a crime, the 

greater the potential cost of committing the crime, which 

should also dissuade offenders.2 Although the idea that 

increasing the severity of punishment should serve as a 

strongly motivating deterrent from crime is intuitive and 

popular, the majority of deterrence research indicates that 

the certainty of the punishment, rather than its severity, is 

the primary mechanism through which deterrence works 

(Nagin, 1998; Durlauf and Nagin, 2011; Paternoster, 

2010). In other words, all things being equal, offenders 

typically respond to a threatened punishment that is more 

likely to occur than to one that is more severe. However, 

it should be noted that the majority—though certainly not 

all—of deterrence research has been conducted on adults; 

that is, much of what researchers know about deterrence 

and risk has not necessarily been studied in juvenile 

populations (Levitt, 1998). Recent research, described 

in this bulletin, has begun to close this age gap in the 

literature.

In this bulletin, the authors review evidence from the 

Pathways to Desistance study on deterrence among serious 

adolescent offenders. They find no meaningful reduction 

Risk of Arrest

Likelihood of

Conviction

Costs of

Punishment

Sanction Regime Perceived Risk

Perceived Reward

Delinquency

Deterrence

Figure 1. Offenders’ Decisionmaking Process
Juvenile Justice Bulletin 5 

in either offending or arrests in response to more severe 

punishments (e.g., correctional placement, longer lengths 

of placement). However, the authors do find evidence that 

serious adolescent offenders respond to the threat or risk 

of sanctions; their recidivism is tied strongly and directly 

to their perceptions of how certain they are that they will 

be arrested.

Increasing Deterrence Through 

Severity: Institutional Placement 

and Length of Stay

In the early 20th century, juvenile courts in the United 

States worked toward the goal of rehabilitating delinquent 

youth to be productive members of society through the use 

of treatment programs. This process was distinctly different 

than that used in the criminal justice system. However, as 

public support of rehabilitation waned in the 1950s and 

1960s, and serious juvenile offending increased in the 

1980s, juvenile courts transformed from treatment-focused 

institutions to more punitive criminal justice agencies 

(Snyder and Sickmund, 1999).

Contemporary juvenile courts seek to accommodate 

the goals of both punishment and intervention in their 

responses to youth crime. Often, these goals overlap and, at 

times, punishment is considered to have rehabilitative value 

by imposing costs on liberty that are designed (in part) to 

deter further offending. In other instances, punishment is 

the goal of court sanctions, especially for youth who are 

transferred to the criminal justice system. Punishments 

range from varying degrees of probation supervision to 

more severe sanctions such as institutional placement. 

Institutional placement is likely to be considered a more 

costly (and severe) penalty than probation and is therefore 

thought to have a stronger deterrent effect. Placement 

itself exacts costs that can vary in terms of the lengths of 

stay and the conditions of confinement. More prisonlike 

institutions are purported to have stronger punishment costs 

than prisons with a more campus-like setting. Deterrence 

is also thought to co-vary with the length of punishment; 

in general, individuals who are institutionalized longer will 

experience a more expensive and severe sanction than those 

with shorter stays. 

Examining the Effect of Severity of 

Punishment on Deterrence

Loughran and colleagues (2009) explored two distinct 

but related questions that are relevant to policy regarding 

specific forms of deterrence and the severity of punishment: 

(1) The researchers estimated the effect of placement and 

of probation on offenders and their subsequent rates of selfreported reoffending and rearrest, and (2) they estimated 

the marginal effect of offenders’ lengths of stay in placement 

on subsequent offending. The following important policy 

perspectives explain why the authors focused on these 

questions (p. 701): 

Thus, the policy question germane to this 

debate is finding the level of punishment 

and/or treatment within the juvenile justice 

system that maximizes the public safety 

benefits of confinement. A demonstration 

of capacity for effective punishment and the 

efficient use of resources are essential to the 

survival of the juvenile court. If longer stays in 

institutional facilities are not producing gains 

in reduced offending, then it is questionable 

whether this use of resources is either justifiable 

or politically attractive. The financial cost of 

placing individuals in institutional care for 

extended periods is substantial, and high levels 

of spending on this practice should produce 

some benefit in terms of increased public 

safety. Without a demonstration that increased 

or longer institutional stays provide such a 

benefit, the argument for incurring these costs is 

substantially weaker. 

Comparing recidivism rates for offenders receiving 

placement versus probation. In the Pathways sample, 

offenders who were placed in an institution had higher 

recidivism rates than those placed on probation. These 

results were borne out in rates of arrest and selfreported offending. Individuals who were removed 

from the community to a correctional or other outof-home placement averaged 1.2 new arrests per year 

(postdisposition for the study index offense). Individuals 

who received probation averaged 0.63 new arrests per 

year, nearly half the rate of those placed in correctional 

settings. Similarly, individuals who were placed in an 

institution self-reported an average of 2.5 more offenses 

per each year in the community (10.9 versus 8.3 

reported offenses per year) than individuals who received 

probation. One interpretation of this evidence is that more 

expensive and severe sanctions have criminogenic—not 

deterrent—effects. 

Selection effect. However, an important theme of 

deterrence research in the Pathways study is that these 

kinds of comparisons are not sufficient to support 

the claim of criminogenic effects of severe sanctions. 

Essentially, comparing offenders placed in an institution 

with those placed on probation is not an equivalent 

comparison. This problem is often referred to in social 

science research as a “selection effect” (i.e., the highest 

risk offenders are selected for the most expensive and 

severe sanctions). A naive comparison of rates of recidivism 

among a group of offenders sentenced to probation 

versus a group of offenders sentenced to placement in 
6 Juvenile Justice Bulletin

a correctional facility would be problematic because 

the group receiving the harsher penalty of placement 

would likely be composed of offenders who were repeat 

offenders, older, or guilty of more severe crimes. In other 

words, they would possess characteristics that would 

make them at greater risk to reoffend regardless of the 

punishment they receive. To rule out such selection 

effects, Loughran and colleagues (2009) matched 

offenders on a wide array of background characteristics 

by comparing similarly situated individuals who received 

different sanctions. 

Matched-Group Comparisons of Offenders

The results were striking. First, after matching, there 

was essentially no difference between the institutional 

placement and probation groups in terms of either rearrest 

or self-reported offending. Contrary to the conclusions 

that might be reached from a simple comparison of the 

two groups, this result suggests that neither a specific 

deterrent effect nor a criminogenic effect of placement 

exists on average (although the researchers did observe a 

small average criminogenic effect that they could not rule 

out as merely the result of random sampling variability). 

Second, among the individuals in placement, there was 

no additional reduction in recidivism (either for rearrest 

or self-reported offending) as a result of institutionalizing 

individuals for longer time periods. Figure 2 shows 

expected rates of rearrest and self-reported offending for 

various lengths of stay. The authors calculated these rates 

after they accounted for the possible selection bias of 

more active and serious offenders (i.e., those more likely 

to recidivate) receiving longer stays in the first place. As 

figure 2 shows, rates do not diminish substantially for 

longer stays in either case. 

The authors note a few important points regarding this 

set of analyses. First, the sample sizes for the effects of 

length of placement are very small for some categories 

of offenders (e.g., for some in placement for less than 30 

days). This factor prevented the researchers from putting 

much faith in the large decrease in self-reported offending 

from 0–6 months in custody to 6–10 months in custody. 

In the analysis, however, the authors used different 

specifications to test the sensitivity of their findings, which 

reinforced these basic results. Still, the patterns found in 

the Pathways sample should be replicated in other samples, 

and one should interpret the findings with some caution. 

Second, these analyses offer no insight regarding the effect 

of length of stay on outcomes other than recidivism, and 

they do not account for the effects of treatment received 

during the stay.3 

Increasing Deterrence Through 

Certainty: Offenders’ Perceptions 

of Risk

Research consistently shows that the perception of 

certainty (or risk of apprehension) is a key mechanism 

of deterrence. The strength of the relationship between 

risk perception and offending, however, is related to 

several person-specific characteristics. Early studies on 

deterrence assumed that offenders knew the actual or 

objective risk of arrest, sanction, and punishment (Levitt, 

1998; Ehrlich, 1975; Sampson and Cohen, 1988). These 

studies assumed that if there were more police, if police 

were more aggressive, or if the length of sentences were 

increased, then offenders would know the risks and behave 

accordingly. In fact, these assessments are subjective, 

based on perceptions of risk and decisions about how 

to use information concerning risk (Nagin, 1998; 

Matsueda, Kreager, and Huizinga, 2006). The average 

subjective probability may approach the objective or actual 

probability of detection across a sample of individuals, but 

one will observe quite a bit of variation in any sample. If 

offenders either fail to perceive risk subjectively or act on 

that perception even if the subjective risks approximate 

actual risks, punitive policies will have a weaker deterrent 

effect. Because of this subjective and experiential nature, 

a body of literature has developed around the idea that 

deterrence is a perceptually based—not purely objective—

phenomenon (Geerken and Gove, 1975). Individuals must 

perceive sanction threats to be affected by them. Recent 

studies of deterrence have focused on how individuals 

form their perceptions of risk and how those perceptions 

are applied (Matsueda, Kreager, and Huizinga, 2006). 

Studies Regarding Offender Perceptions 

of Risk

A substantial body of research has examined these 

perceptions, but it mainly uses samples of adults, 

nonoffenders, or primarily nonserious offenders (Grasmick 

and Bursik, 1990; Nagin, 1998; Nagin and Paternoster, 

1993; Nagin and Pogarsky, 2001, 2003; Piquero and 

Tibbetts, 1996). This literature highlights a small but 

important relationship between individuals’ beliefs 

about the likelihood of getting caught and the extent 

to which they offend. An important limitation of these 

studies is the relative lack of attention to active and 

serious offenders, the precise group for whom studies of 

deterrence are ultimately most relevant (Apospori, Alpert, 

and Paternoster, 1992; Decker, Wright, and Logie, 1993; 

Piquero and Rengert, 1999). The dearth of findings 

among serious offending adolescents presents a particularly 

important limitation, given this group’s high level of 

criminal activity and the developmental deficits that may 

affect their cognition and decisionmaking ability with 
Juvenile Justice Bulletin 7 

this category of serious and more seasoned offenders, 

the responsiveness to deterrence varies. This work also 

suggests that a disconnect may exist between perceptual 

and actual cost-benefit calculations with regard to 

individual assessments of severity, as the placement and 

length of stay analyses suggest no effect exists whereas the 

perceptual analysis shows an effect exists.

Loughran and colleagues (2012a) explored heterogeneity 

in perceptions of risks, costs, and rewards for crime 

among the Pathways sample to extend this work. They 

show that perceptions may evolve over time differentially 

among adolescent offenders. Important and prospectively 

identifiable differences in the sample, based on perceptions 

of offending, suggest that amenability to deterrence 

varies widely. The researchers conclude that accumulated 

offending experience provides a simple way to divide 

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

0−6 6−10 10−13 >13

Rate

Months

Figure 2. Expected Rate of Reoffending by Length of Stay

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

0−6 6−10 10−13 >13

Rate

Months

A. Expected Rate of Rearrest

B. Expected Rate of Self-Reported Offending

Adapted from Loughran, T.A., Mulvey, E.P., Schubert, C.A., Fagan, J., Piquero, A.R., and Losoya, S.H. 2009. 

Estimating a dose-response relationship between length of stay and future recidivism in serious juvenile 

offenders. Criminology 47:699–740.

respect to both sanction risk (Fagan and 

Piquero, 2007) and crime (Steinberg and 

Scott, 2003). As such, a critical policy 

question is whether adolescents who are 

more serious, chronic offenders consider 

and respond to threats of sanctions in 

their decisionmaking, or whether they 

can be deterred at all.

Analysis of Pathways Data 

Regarding Offenders’ 

Perceptions of Risk

The Pathways data provide 

comprehensive information to support 

the study of offender perceptions and 

how serious youthful offenders think 

about the risks and benefits of crime. 

In this section, the authors consider 

several questions related to perceptions 

of certainty (and other perceptions, such 

as rewards) through recent analyses from 

the Pathways study: 

● Do perceptions of the risks and 

rewards of crime differ based on the 

frequency of offending?

● Do these perceptions change over 

time?

● Does the experience of an arrest 

prompt changes in these perceptions? 

Fagan and Piquero (2007) consider the 

role of a rational choice framework—

including perceptions of risk, reward, 

and social and personal costs—to explain 

individual offending trajectories in 

the Pathways data. They find evidence 

that rational choice perceptual measures are associated 

with differences in offending trajectories and desistance. 

Specifically, when individuals understand the risks 

and costs of punishment, crime rates tend to be lower 

over time—both risk perceptions and evaluations of 

experienced punishment compete with perceived and 

experienced rewards of crime to influence individual 

offending trajectories. Fagan and Piquero (2007:718) 

argue that these factors work through the mechanism 

of legal socialization (“the internalization of law, rules, 

and agreements among members of society, and the 

legitimacy of authority to deal fairly with citizens who 

violate society’s rules”) to directly influence decisions to 

offend. These results establish a necessary baseline for 

showing that even the most serious adolescent offenders 

can be deterred under certain conditions. Yet, even within 
8 Juvenile Justice Bulletin

These results open the door to other questions regarding 

deterrability: 

● Do these perceptions change over time in response 

to offending and its consequences, or do they remain 

static and largely insensitive to change and updating 

within individuals? 

● Does the composition of cost-benefit perceptions 

matter to some offenders more than others, and how 

do these perceptions vary by individual characteristics 

and over time? 

● Can influencing or changing perceptions affect 

offending for a group of serious adolescent offenders, 

or does it ultimately not matter in the decision to 

offend? 

The next set of studies address some of the following 

questions: Do risk perceptions change over time? How do 

the changes lead to decisions to commit crime or avoid 

it? How do patterns vary in each group over time? A final 

item of concern is: What role do perceptions of risks and 

rewards of crime play in the long-term desistance from 

crime?

Increasing Certainty Through 

Arrest

An arrest will deter an individual only if two things 

happen: (1) The perception of the risk of detection must 

increase in response to an arrest, and (2) this increase must 

lead to a reduction in the likelihood of reoffending. Both 

of these links must be active for deterrence to operate 

(Pogarsky, Piquero, and Paternoster, 2004). By examining 

both responses among juveniles in the “deep end” of 

the system, researchers can determine if serious juvenile 

offenders, such as those involved in the Pathways study, 

are in fact deterrable. 

Anwar and Loughran (2011) explore the first question 

in the Pathways data: Do adolescent felony offenders 

update their subjective beliefs about their perceived risk of 

detection as they accumulate additional information about 

the sample into groups according to their perceptions of 

certainty of detection and punishment. Specifically, they 

identified a group of high-rate offenders who displayed 

lower perceived risks of detection and punishment for 

crime (and also higher perceived rewards from crime). 

Moreover, they identified a group of low-rate offenders 

who reported higher perceived risk and lower perceived 

rewards for offending. Finally, they identified a third 

group of medium-rate offenders whose perceptions of 

risks (and rewards) fell in between those of the first two 

groups. Interestingly, these differences seem to be stable 

over time—the average levels of perceptions of risks 

and rewards among the three types of offenders did not 

converge after 36 months. The differences, therefore, 

continued to be evident as young offenders grew older, 

persisting in spite of age or maturity effects that otherwise 

might have influenced group composition. 

Findings Regarding Differences in 

Deterrent Effects

Considering their findings, Loughran and colleagues 

(2012a) advance the notion of differential deterrence, a 

term that characterizes the wide variation that exists across 

serious juvenile offenders’ decisionmaking, perceptions of 

rational choice components, and involvement in criminal 

activity. A similar phenomenon has been observed in 

other settings. For example, research on adult domestic 

violence offenders in Milwaukee suggests that arrest acts as 

a deterrent to future violence among offenders with high 

stakes in conformity (married and employed), whereas it is 

criminogenic for offenders with low stakes in conformity 

(unmarried and unemployed) (Sherman and Smith, 

1992). This underscores the notion that some serious 

offenders may be sensitive to changes in criminal justice 

tactics aimed at making crime less rewarding and more 

costly, whereas others, such as those with fewer stakes 

in conformity, may be less likely to respond to signals of 

increased risk and cost.
Juvenile Justice Bulletin 9 

both offending and arrests, including undetected offenses? 

To test this hypothesis, the researchers used the concept of 

Bayesian learning. Bayesian learning posits that individuals 

will adjust or update their previously held subjective beliefs 

in response to newly observed information, known as a 

“signal” (in this case, the ratio of the number of arrests to 

self-reported crimes). Their analyses demonstrated that, 

as is the case with nonoffenders (Pogarsky, Piquero, and 

Paternoster, 2004; Lochner, 2007; Matsueda, Kreager, 

and Huizinga, 2006), individuals in the Pathways sample 

tend to adjust their risk perceptions upward slightly in 

response to an arrest—by about 5 percent on average, 

divided by each crime committed. This is a necessary 

condition for deterrence. However, when offending is 

undetected or avoids a legal reaction, individuals actually 

have lower risk perceptions. 

Anwar and Loughran (2011) show two other interesting 

and policy-relevant extensions to this basic updating 

process. The first is an experience effect. Individuals who 

are far along in their criminal careers might become 

certain about their true arrest rate and will therefore 

no longer update their risk perceptions based on new 

experiences. These individuals may be “maxed-out” on 

information and, consequently, an arrest has no effect 

on their subsequent risk perceptions because they are 

quite certain in their perceptions already. This implies 

that a deterrent effect of arrests no longer exists, at least 

in the sense of increasing perceptions of sanction risk 

(i.e., an individual’s perceived likelihood of detection) 

for crime. In such instances where experience trumps 

new information, sanction threats may influence only 

certain subgroups of offenders (Parker and Grasmick, 

1979; Pogarsky, 2002). The balance of this population 

might then be undeterrable. Anwar and Loughran (2011) 

present evidence that confirms such an experience effect. 

They suggest that for those offenders who are farther 

along in their criminal careers, arrests have a weaker 

perceptual deterrent effect; by extension, arrests early 

in an individual’s criminal career may produce a greater 

deterrent effect than those that occur later on (Smith and 

Gartin, 1989). 

The second extension that Anwar and Loughran 

(2011) suggest concerns the observation that the riskupdating process may be crime specific. In this view, 

experiencing an arrest for one type of crime appears to 

affect perceptions for that type of crime only, rather than 

all crime risk perceptions, at least at the level of incomegenerating (e.g., stealing) versus aggressive (e.g., assault) 

crimes. The policy relevance of this possibility is clear. 

If risk-perception updating is crime specific, then police 

crackdowns on one type of crime are unlikely to deter 

other crimes. They may even encourage other crimes 

by shifting limited police resources away from detecting 

certain crimes or by inducing a substitution effect, in 

which offenders switch their preferences from crimes with 

a high likelihood of detection to crimes that are more 

likely to escape detection (Nagin, 1998). However, if risk 

perceptions are not crime specific, then cracking down on 

a specific type of crime will have a global deterrent effect. 

At least for the adolescents in the Pathways study, crimespecific updating implies that policies targeting specific 

types of offending may be more effective at deterring 

individuals from engaging in these offenses than are 

general policies aimed at overall crime reduction. If a 

police force has limited resources and thus decides to 

target selected types of crime, it will likely have to shift its 

focus away from other types of crime. This shift in focus 

may result in a reduction in perceived risk of sanctions 

for the crimes that are not targeted. Results of Anwar 

and Loughran’s (2011) study support the notion that 

individuals, in response to targeted crime policies, may 

engage in crimes that police do not target and are thus at 

lower risk of detection.

Behavioral Responses to Changes 

in Risk Perceptions: The Certainty 

Effect

Individuals updating their subjective risk perceptions in 

response to arrest is a necessary condition for deterrence. 

Yet, this connection between arrest and risk perceptions 

“Individuals who received probation averaged 0.63 new arrests per

year, nearly half the rate of those placed in correctional settings.”
10 Juvenile Justice Bulletin

may ultimately be insufficient if these changes in risk 

perceptions do not result in changes in offending. Thus, 

it is important to consider whether changes in risk 

perceptions are associated with subsequent changes in 

behavior among serious juvenile offenders and, if so, 

how these changes manifest across different levels of 

risk perceptions. It is important to examine this policy 

question in the Pathways sample, especially because most 

prior research has been based on samples of nonoffenders 

(and other low-risk groups) and the effects tend to be 

small (Pratt and Cullen, 2005). Moreover, even if such 

risk-certainty/deterrent effects exist, it is not known 

whether the effects are constant across the risk spectrum 

or if there is a “tipping point” above which changes in risk 

deter crime but below which they do not.

Loughran and colleagues (2012b) investigated the 

presence and salience of a certainty effect among the 

serious offenders in the Pathways study. The researchers 

report strong evidence of a negative association 

between risk and self-reported offending. They reveal 

some important features of the functional form of this 

relationship; that is, its shape along different points of 

the risk continuum. The data show strong evidence of 

nonlinearity in the risk-offending relationship. Linearity 

implies that increases in the perception of risk would 

be associated with corresponding decreases in reported 

offending regardless of the individual’s prior risk 

perception; for example, a 10-percent increase in risk from 

10 to 20 percent would reduce offending by the same 

magnitude as a change from 50 to 60 percent or from 

80 to 90 percent. The analyses indicate that this is not 

the case. Instead, the researchers found that, although 

increases in risk for individuals in the midrange of the 

risk continuum (i.e., 30 to 90 percent) are associated 

with a linear decline in the likelihood of offending, the 

likelihood of offending for individuals in the lower end of 

the risk continuum (i.e., less than 30 percent) is relatively 

insensitive to sanction risk. 

The researchers found no evidence of any certainty effect 

among the members of this group; that is, increases in 

sanction risk were not associated with a reduction in 

offending. There appears to be a detection probability 

threshold that must be reached before any deterrent 

effect can be realized. This phenomenon has been 

observed previously but not at the individual level (Tittle 

and Rowe, 1974; Chamlin, 1991). Individual offenders 

deem law enforcement capabilities and the perception 

of sanction threats to be credible only when they are 

above that threshold. By extension, greater sanction 

risks are not likely to deter offenders who do not deem 

such threats credible in the first place. Loughran and 

colleagues (2012b) also observed that, for juveniles who 

perceive offending to be very high risk (i.e., perceived risk 

greater than 90 percent), the rate of decline in offending 

likelihood increases dramatically with changes in risk. 

Such “overweighting,” or treating high probabilities as 

certainty, is again inconsistent with a linear risk-offending 

relationship and suggests that there is a threshold at which 

an individual’s perceived risk is so high that they are at 

virtually no risk of offending. As such, policies aimed at 

such individuals with high perceptions of risk are perhaps 

inefficient or unnecessary. Figure 3 summarizes the 

relationship between levels of perceived risk and potential 

deterrent effects for these different risk-based categories of 

offenders. 

The Deterrent Effect of Ambiguity 

in Offender Risk Perceptions

These analyses of the Pathways data also show that 

considerable ambiguity exists in offender risk perceptions. 

Loughran and colleagues (2011) investigated not only 

whether average risk perceptions deter would-be offenders 

but also whether the variability, or degree of uncertainty, 

of such perceptions is also important. This concept 

comes from the literature on behavioral decision theory, 

where an important distinction is made between risk—or 

probabilities, known to decisionmakers—and uncertainty, 
Juvenile Justice Bulletin 11 

for each individual as the amount of variability in his or 

her crime-specific risk perceptions. These results show 

that, for income-generating crimes, the deterrent effect of 

offender risk perceptions was enhanced for individuals who 

reported higher uncertainty in their perceptions near the 

lower end of the risk continuum. This result is consistent 

with Sherman’s hypothesis and the concept of “ambiguity 

aversion” in decision theory, which suggests that 

individuals are generally adverse to uncertainty (Camerer 

and Weber, 1992); that is, individuals tend to prefer 

known risks to unknown risks, even when considering 

gambles of equally expected payoffs. 

The implications of these findings are both considerable 

and controversial. By increasing the amount of uncertainty 

about the rate of detection, the deterrent effect of 

potential detection increased dramatically. This finding 

argues for the introduction of randomization into police 

surveillance and patrol—changes that do not necessarily 

require any additional law enforcement resources. For 

example, police could rotate their enforcement across both 

offenses and places so that the risk of punishment is far 

more unpredictable to active offenders than it normally 

where such risks are unknown and are 

formed subjectively. This literature has 

shown that individuals tend to prefer 

known gambles over more uncertain 

ones, even for similarly valued outcomes 

(Camerer and Weber, 1992). For example, 

when offered the choice between a 

gamble with a known 50-percent chance 

to win versus the same gamble with 

anywhere between a 0- and 100-percent 

chance to win, individuals tend to prefer 

the former (where the risk is known) as 

opposed to the latter (which, on average, 

is the same gamble but the exact risk is 

unknown and may be either lower or 

higher) (Ellsberg, 1961). It is this type 

of ambiguity, or uncertainty about the 

subjective risks of detection on the part of 

the offender, that the authors studied for 

its relationship to deterrence. 

Uncertainty in perceptions of detection 

probabilities may actually enhance the 

deterrent effect of increases in perceived certainty. For 

example, Sherman (1993) noted that it is not possible to 

raise punishment certainty to very high levels because of 

limited resources. Yet, as he argues, although the mean 

level of punishment certainty might continue to be low, it 

could be unpredictably variable—at times it would be very 

high in some areas but very low in others. This natural 

variability would lead to ambiguity regarding the certainty 

of punishment, thereby increasing its deterrent potential. 

Thus, Sherman argued that random police activity 

provides vague or ambiguous information about the risk of 

punishment, exploiting this natural uncertainty about the 

risk. Although the overall level of detection may be low, 

creating uncertainty about specific detection probabilities 

with respect to certain areas, crime types, or other factors 

may generate a larger perceived risk of getting caught as 

compared to a constant, low rate of detection. 

To test this idea in the Pathways data, Loughran and 

colleagues (2011) examined the role of ambiguity in 

offender risk perceptions and its relationship to the 

certainty effect. The researchers characterized uncertainty 

Accelerated

reduction in

offending—

deterrable and

tend to

overweight

sanction threats

Large

reduction in

offending—

highly

deterrable

No change in

offending— below

“tipping”

threshold;

threats

deemed not

credible.

0 30 90 100

Perceived Risk 

(Percent)

Offending 

Rate

Figure 3. Differential Offending Responses to Changes in Risk 

Perceptions by Risk-Class

“[G]reater sanction risks are not likely to deter offenders 

who do not deem such threats credible in the first place.”
12 Juvenile Justice Bulletin

would be (Harcourt and Meares, 2010). Thus, with 

the same level of resources, modifying police practice to 

increase uncertainty could enhance overall deterrence. The 

implications are controversial because they would require 

police agencies to substantially rethink how they deploy 

their scarce resources. The idea is that a random police 

presence creates a widespread sense of being monitored, 

wherein the certainty of sanction threats is heightened 

because offenders will not know where or when they 

might be caught. 

Policy Implications

From a policy perspective, this recent work from the 

Pathways study has the following important implications:

● Even within a group of serious juvenile offenders, the 

certainty of punishment can play an important role in 

deterring future crime. However, the deterrent effect of 

more severe punishments seems to be limited, in terms 

of both institutional placement and longer stays. 

● This process does not operate in the same way for all 

offenders—policies that assume a “one size fits all” 

approach will fail for some offenders. 

● Frequency of self-reported offending seems to be an 

important way to distinguish groups of offenders who 

may be more or less deterrable.

● Arresting youth before they have gained a sizable 

reservoir of offenses appears to have the greatest 

potential to prompt perceptual changes that may curtail 

future offending. However, those changes in perception 

are greatest in relationship to the crime associated 

with the arrest (e.g., perceptions of the risk for getting 

caught for robbery are likely to increase when the 

individual has been arrested for robbery). 

● Policies that target specific types of offending may 

be marginally more effective at curbing the targeted 

offenses than general policies aimed at a widespread 

reduction in crime levels.

● Changes in offender perceptions of risk may be related 

to offending, yet the individual’s prior perception is 

an important determinant of how this change in risk 

perception will be related to offending. For example, 

there may be a threshold that an offender must cross 

for the threat to seem credible. 

● Perceived uncertainty in offenders’ subjective 

interpretations of risk may be utilized to enhance the 

deterrent effect. This has direct policy implications; for 

example, unpredictable variability in policing may lead 

to some additional deterrent effects along with a fixed 

level of police presence. 

Conclusion

The Pathways study has revealed some important 

relationships between offending and perceptions of risk 

and rewards of crime in a sample of serious adolescent 

offenders; these relationships are relevant on both a 

theoretical and a policy level. For example, the results 

thus far have shed light on the mechanisms that govern 

how justice system sanctions may contribute to changes in 

juvenile offenders’ perceptions of the risks of engaging in 

crime and the certainty and severity of punishment; this, 

in turn, may lead these offenders to change their behavior. 

The findings provide further support for efficiency- and 

deterrence-oriented police patrol strategies by providing 

a heightened sense of supervision and, subsequently, of 

risk (Sherman and Weisburd, 1995; Koper, 1995). Results 

from the Pathways study are in line with advocates of 

“justice reinvestment” strategies. The authors’ findings 

show that severity of punishment (i.e., incarceration) 

has little specific deterrent effect. Therefore, the authors 

advocate for shifting resources from prisons to areas that 

are related to offenders’ perceptions of risk.

The understanding of these mechanisms can be linked to 

well-developed work in other social sciences dealing with 

how individuals make decisions. This work also sets the 

stage for future investigations regarding the following 

questions: 

● Does an identifiable threshold of offending frequency 

exist above which arrests no longer have an impact on 

perceptions of risk?

● Are optimal changes in risk perceptions associated with 

subsequent changes in behavior?
Juvenile Justice Bulletin 13 

The study investigators will continue to explore these and 

other areas. 

As a whole, the results from the Pathways sample paint 

a rich picture of how policymakers may begin to think 

of deterring serious adolescent offenders. However, 

this picture is incomplete. On the one hand, the results 

discussed in this bulletin suggest the possibility of effective 

deterrence for a subgroup of offenders. Many of these 

offenders contemplate and weigh risk, cost, and rewards 

when deciding to offend. They tend to adjust these 

perceptions according to recent sanction experiences and 

react to these changes in ways that may reflect deterrence. 

However, what is known about offenders’ sanction 

threat perceptions, and how these perceptions relate to 

subsequent offending decisions, explains only a small 

portion of their decisionmaking. The challenge ahead 

in deterrence research on serious adolescent offenders is 

to learn more about offenders’ decisionmaking so that 

policies can more efficiently and effectively deter these 

offenders from crime. 

Endnotes

1. OJJDP is sponsoring the Pathways to Desistance study 

(project number 2007–MU–FX–0002) in partnership with 

the National Institute of Justice (project number 2008–

IJ–CX–0023), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur 

Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Robert 

Wood Johnson Foundation, the William Penn Foundation, 

the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Grant Number 

R01–DA019697), the Centers for Disease Control and 

Prevention, the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and 

Delinquency, and the Arizona State Governor’s Justice 

Commission. Investigators for this study are Edward P. 

Mulvey, Ph.D. (University of Pittsburgh), Robert Brame, 

Ph.D. (University of North Carolina–Charlotte), Elizabeth 

Cauffman, Ph.D. (University of California–Irvine), 

Laurie Chassin, Ph.D. (Arizona State University), Sonia 

Cota-Robles, Ph.D. (Temple University), Jeffrey Fagan, 

Ph.D. (Columbia University), George Knight, Ph.D. 

(Arizona State University), Sandra Losoya, Ph.D. (Arizona 

State University), Alex Piquero, Ph.D. (University of 

Texas–Dallas), Carol A. Schubert, M.P.H. (University 

of Pittsburgh), and Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D. (Temple 

University). More details about the study can be found 

in a previous OJJDP fact sheet (Mulvey, 2011) and at 

the study website (www.pathwaysstudy.pitt.edu), which 

includes a list of publications from the study.

2. Interestingly, deterrence theorists often speak of the 

need to maximize the certainty of sanctions while ensuring 

that their severity is well matched to the seriousness of the 

crime. This leads to the idea that the severity of sanctions 

should be meaningfully related to the seriousness of crime 

so that more serious crimes result in more severe sanctions. 

Until recently, these proportionality principles were part of 

the expressive function of punishment (Feinberg, 1965).

3. To the extent that one believes that the juvenile justice 

system has the dual responsibility to treat as well as to 

punish, this is an important consideration. Certain types 

of treatment have best-practices standards regarding 

length of stay to realize their full effect. For example, 

National Institute on Drug Abuse standards suggest that 

treatment for substance use should continue for 90 days 

to produce stable change (National Institute on Drug 

Abuse, 2012), and an analysis of this duration effect with 

the Pathways sample indicates that treatment that does not 

meet this threshold is not effective in reducing marijuana 

use (Chassin et al., 2009). Comparing these standards to 

reports—stating that the average length of stay in juvenile 

residential settings is 180 days for a person offense (Butts 

and Adams, 2001)—reveals that more consideration 

of current practices regarding youth’s length of stay in 

confinement is warranted. Unfortunately, short-term 

shock incarceration programs (frequently called boot-camp 

prisons) are known to be ineffective in reducing recidivism 

(MacKenzie, Wilson, and Kider, 2001). Researchers have 

also found that exceedingly long incarceration periods are 

harmful—for example, material restrictions and freedom 

costs (Fagan and Piquero, 2007); perverse effects, such as 

increased offending (Agnew, 1992); and increased defiance 

(Piquero, Langton, and Gomez-Smith, 2004). However, 

researchers do not know the optimal length of stay that 

will promote the most positive effects of treatment at the 

same time it advances deterrence. 
14 Juvenile Justice Bulletin

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Press.
This bulletin was prepared under grant number 

2007–MU–FX–0002 from the Office of Juvenile 

Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), 

U.S. Department of Justice.

Points of view or opinions expressed in this 

document are those of the authors and do not 

necessarily represent the official position or policies 

of OJJDP or the U.S. Department of Justice.

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Acknowledgments

Thomas A. Loughran, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology 

and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland. 

Robert Brame, Ph.D., is Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal 

Justice, University of North Carolina–Charlotte. 

Jeffrey Fagan, Ph.D., is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law, 

Columbia University Law School. 

Alex R. Piquero is Ashbel Smith Professor in the Program in Criminology in 

the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at the University of 

Texas at Dallas and Adjunct Professor, Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice, and 

Governance, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. 

Edward P. Mulvey, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Law 

and Psychiatry Program at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC), 

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. 

Carol A. Schubert, M.P.H., is the Research Program Administrator of the Law 

and Psychiatry Program at WPIC.