NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE
 

FIVE THINGS
 

ABOUT DETERRENCE 

Deter would-be criminals by using scientific evidence about human behavior and perceptions 

about the costs, risks and rewards of crime. 

1. The certainty of being caught is a vastly more 

powerful deterrent than the punishment. 

Research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more 

effective deterrent than even draconian punishment. 

2. Sending an individual convicted of a crime to prison 

isn’t a very effective way to deter crime. 

Prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, 

but prison sentences (particularly long sentences) are unlikely to deter 

future crime. Prisons actually may have the opposite effect: Inmates learn 

more effective crime strategies from each other, and time spent in prison 

may desensitize many to the threat of future imprisonment. 

See “Understanding the Relationship Between Sentencing and Deterrence” 

for additional discussion on prison as an ineffective deterrent. 

3. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that 

criminals will be caught and punished. 

The police deter crime when they do things that strengthen a criminal’s 

perception of the certainty of being caught. Strategies that use the police as 

“sentinels,” such as hot spots policing, are particularly effective. A criminal’s 

behavior is more likely to be influenced by seeing a police officer with 

handcuffs and a radio than by a new law increasing penalties. 

4. Increasing the severity of punishment does little to 

deter crime. 

Laws and policies designed to deter crime by focusing mainly on increasing 

the severity of punishment are ineffective partly because criminals know 

little about the sanctions for specific crimes. 

More severe punishments do not “chasten” individuals convicted of crimes, 

and prisons may exacerbate recidivism. 

See “Understanding the Relationship Between Sentencing and Deterrence” 

for additional discussion on the severity of punishment. 

5. There is no proof that the death penalty deters 

criminals. 

According to the National Academy of Sciences, “Research on the deterrent 

effect of capital punishment is uninformative about whether capital 

punishment increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates.” 

Source: Daniel S. Nagin, “Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century,” in Crime 

and Justice: A Review of Research, vol. 42: Crime and Justice in America: 

1975-2025, ed. Michael Tonry, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

1 

National Institute of Justice • Strengthen Science • Advance Justice

May 2016 NCJ 247350 1

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

The content on this page is not intended to create, does not create, and 

may not be relied upon to create any rights, substantive or procedural, 

enforceable at law by any party in any matter civil or criminal. 

Findings and conclusions of the research reported here are those of the 

authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice. 
National Institute of Justice • Strengthen Science • Advance Justice

May 2016 NCJ 247350 2

National Institute of Justice Five Things About Deterrence • 

 

 

—

Understanding the Relationship Between Sentencing and Deterrence 

In his 2013 essay, “Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century,” Daniel S. Nagin 

succinctly summarized the current state of theory and empirical knowledge about 

deterrence. The information in this publication is drawn from Nagin’s essay with 

additional context provided by NIJ and is presented here to help those who make 

policies and laws that are based on science. 

NIJ’s “Five Things About Deterrence” summarizes a large body of research 

related to deterrence of crime into five points. Two of the five things relate to 

the impact of sentencing on deterrence — “Sending an individual convicted of 

a crime to prison isn’t a very effective way to deter crime” and “Increasing the 

severity of punishment does little to deter crime.” Those are simple assertions, 

but the issues of punishment and deterrence are far more complex. This 

addendum to the original “Five Things” provides additional context and evidence 

regarding those two statements. 

It is important to note that while the assertion in the original “Five Things” 

focused only on the impact of sentencing on deterring the commission of future 

crimes, a prison sentence serves two primary purposes: punishment and 

incapacitation. Those two purposes combined are a linchpin of United States 

sentencing policy, and those who oversee sentencing or are involved in the 

development of sentencing policy should always keep that in mind. 

1. “Five Things About Deterrence” is available at https://ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf. 

Deterrence and Incapacitation 

There is an important distinction between deterrence and 

incapacitation. Individuals behind bars cannot commit additional crime

 this is incarceration as incapacitation. Before someone commits 

a crime, he or she may fear incarceration and thus refrain from 

committing future crimes — this is incarceration as deterrence. 

“Sending an individual convicted of a crime to prison isn’t a very 

effective way to deter crime.” 

Prison is an important option for incapacitating and punishing those who
 

commit crimes, but the data show long prison sentences do little to deter
 

people from committing future crimes.
 

Viewing the findings of research on severity effects in their totality, there is 

evidence suggesting that short sentences may be a deterrent. However, a 

consistent finding is that increases in already lengthy sentences produce at best 

a very modest deterrent effect. 

A very small fraction of individuals who commit crimes — about 2 to 5 percent 

— are responsible for 50 percent or more of crimes.2 Locking up these 

individuals when they are young and early in their criminal careers could be 

an effective strategy to preventing crime if we could identify who they are. The 

problem is: we can’t. We have tried to identify the young people most likely to 

commit crimes in the future, but the science shows we can’t do it effectively. 

It is important to recognize that many of these individuals who offend at higher rates 

may already be incarcerated because they put themselves at risk of apprehension so 

much more frequently than individuals who offend at lower rates. 

“Increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime.” 

To clarify the relationship between the severity of punishment and the 

deterrence of future crimes, you need to understand: 

• The lack of any “chastening” effect from prison sentences,

 • That prisons may exacerbate recidivism,

 • The different impacts of the certainty versus the severity of punishment 

 on deterrence, and

 • That individuals grow out of criminal activity as they age. 

More severe punishments do not “chasten” individuals convicted of crimes. 

Some policymakers and practitioners believe that increasing the severity of the 

prison experience enhances the “chastening” effect, thereby making individuals 

convicted of an offense less likely to commit crimes in the future. In fact, 

scientists have found no evidence for the chastening effect. 

Prisons may exacerbate recidivism. 

Research has found evidence that prison can exacerbate, not reduce, 

recidivism. Prisons themselves may be schools for learning to commit crimes. In 

2009, Nagin, Cullen and Jonson published a review of evidence on the effect of 

imprisonment on reoffending.3

 The review included a sizable number of studies, 

including data from outside the U.S. The researchers concluded: 

“... compared to non-custodial sanctions, incarceration has a null or mildly 

criminogenic impact on future criminal involvement. We caution that this 

assessment is not sufficiently firm to guide policy, with the exception that 

it calls into question wild claims that imprisonment has strong specific 

deterrent effects.” 

Certainty has a greater impact on deterrence than severity of punishment. 

Severity refers to the length of a sentence. Studies show that for most individuals 

convicted of a crime, short to moderate prison sentences may be a deterrent but 

longer prison terms produce only a limited deterrent effect. In addition, the crime 

prevention benefit falls far short of the social and economic costs. 

Certainty refers to the likelihood of being caught and punished for the commission 

of a crime. Research underscores the more significant role that certainty plays in 

deterrence than severity — it is the certainty of being caught that deters a person 

from committing crime, not the fear of being punished or the severity of the 

punishment. Effective policing that leads to swift and certain (but not necessarily 

severe) sanctions is a better deterrent than the threat of incarceration. In addition, 

there is no evidence that the deterrent effect increases when the likelihood of 

conviction increases. Nor is there any evidence that the deterrent effect increases 

when the likelihood of imprisonment increases. 

A person’s age is a powerful factor in deterring crime. 

Even those individuals who commit crimes at the highest rates begin to change 

their criminal behavior as they age. The data show a steep decline at about age 

35.4

 A more severe (i.e., lengthy) prison sentence for convicted individuals who are 

naturally aging out of crime does achieve the goal of punishment and incapacitation. 

But that incapacitation is a costly way to deter future crimes by aging individuals 

who already are less likely to commit those crimes by virtue of age. 

2. Mulvey, Edward P., Highlights from Pathways to Desistance: A Longitudinal Study 

of Serious Adolescent Offenders, Juvenile Justice Fact Sheet, Washington, DC: U.S. 

Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, March 

2011, NCJ 230971. Available at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/230971.pdf. 

3. Nagin, Daniel S., Francis T. Cullen and Cheryl Lero Johnson, “Imprisonment and 

Reoffending,” Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, vol. 38, ed. Michael Tonry, 

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009: 115-200. 

4. Sampson, Robert. J., John H. Laub and E.P. Eggleston, “On the Robustness and Validity 

of Groups,” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 20 (1) (2004): 37-42.