Classical Deterrence: The Threat Of Conforcement In Society

The very idea of controlling society through the threat of punishment lends itself to a society plagued by negative reinforcement. However, this is a necessary step in some social circles where respective citizens may not have had a proper upbringing or simply chose not to respond by learning from their proper upbringing. As the journal article states, it is fairly common practice to spend a considerable amount of money in not only punishing wrongdoers, but threatening society of the risks of wrongdoing as a preventative measure (Wright, Caspi, Moffit, & Paternoster, 2004, p. 2, para. 1). The answers derived in the journal are that everyone responds the same to sanction threats, the motivation of crimes outweigh the threats for some criminals,

3, para. 3). Criminal propensity theories lean towards the idea that those who are more criminally prone care less about deterrence because of their risk-taking nature; which is not to say sanctions are irrelevant to criminal prone, just that the more criminally prone a person is, the less sanctions and deterrence matter (Wright, Caspi, Moffit, & Paternoster, 2004, p. 3, para. 4-5). A third theoretical view has the idea that more criminally prone individuals react to deterrence than law abiding, morally sound individuals because the latter do not consider the calculated costs of crime, but rather follow the law regardless (Wright, Caspi, Moffit, & Paternoster, 2004, p. 4, para. 6). This theory lends itself to more of a stalemate, as those prone to follow the law cannot be further deterred from breaking the

Chief among them, and the most used in the article, are deterrence and criminal propensity. Deterrence, as it is used in the article, is the intentional discouragement of a criminal to commit a crime. Criminal propensity is an inclination for a criminal to commit crimes or an inclination for a criminal to behave with criminal behavior. Another term used is sanctions, and that is used in the article to mean any type of punishment whereby some form of freedom is taken away from a criminal. That could mean they are put on house arrest, probation, forced to do community service, pay a fine which sanctions money away from them, or even a prison or jail sentence which takes away their freedom entirely. Non-market areas is a term used which means “areas of life and behavior in which individuals act in strict accordance with their moral beliefs and neglect more instrumental considerations”. In other words, if a person wakes up every day ready to obey the law and keep their lives on a path that is strictly legal without even considering crime an option, they live within a non-market area. Another term is the marginal offender, which means an offender who is wavering, and while seen as a criminal, is neither strongly committed to conformity nor