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How Offender Decision-making Can Inform Policing: A Focus on the Perceived Certainty of Apprehension

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Science Informed Policing

Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that the perceived certainty of apprehension is a far more effective deterrent than the severity of sanctioning. In concordance with this, many policing strategies have focused on increasing the certainty of apprehension as a key tactic in crime reduction. This chapter describes how recent advances in criminological understanding of perceived certainty are thought to influence offender decision-making. We then illustrate how these findings may inform policing and suggest potential avenues for collaborations between researchers and practitioners to further enhance understanding of offender decision-making and guide evidence-based policing.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Nagin et al. (2009:178) note “a key finding of our review is that the great majority of studies point to a null or criminogenic effect of the prison experience on subsequent offending. This reading of the evidence should, at least, caution against wild claims – at times found in “get tough” rhetoric voiced in recent decades – that prisons have special powers to scare offenders straight.”

  2. 2.

    Moreover, Pogarsky and Loughran (2016) suggested that the idea that there is a single “objective” certainty and severity of punishment is nonsensical because individuals have private information (e.g., criminal expertise and technique) as well as personal attributes (e.g., age, race, gender, prior record) which have known impacts on the likelihood of apprehension as well as the severity of sanctioning.

  3. 3.

    They explained this unexpected finding as evidence of a resetting effect based on the “gambler’s fallacy.” This is the idea that when rolling a regular 6-sided dice, if an individual has rolled even three times in a row, the person may think “I have a high likelihood of rolling an odd number next time, because surely an odd number has to come up next!” This is a decision-making bias or “fallacy” because each single roll of a dice is independent with .50 probability or rolling an even and .50 probability or rolling an odd. Notably, the previous roll (because it is independent) has no influence on the outcome of the next roll. However, after rolling an even several times, an individual may feel reassured (or perceive) that they’re more likely to roll an even on the next roll. This exact idea was applied to offending. For example, if a person is apprehended for committing a crime – they could cognitively believe events are interdependent and now that they have been apprehended once, they’re sure to get away with it next time, creating an “emboldening effect” where the perceived certainty of apprehension actually decreases in response to apprehension.

  4. 4.

    No contact crimes included breaking in, stealing, theft, and vandalism. Contact crimes included fighting, stabbing, and robbery with a gun.

  5. 5.

    For instance, as Thomas et al. (2018) describe, two individuals who report the same perception about risk for a certain crime (e.g., 40%) may actually have very different beliefs about what this means, though each would feel that this crime is riskier than a different crime for which they feel the risk is only 20%, even if the absolute differences are not meaningful.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Chae M. Jaynes

  2. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Thomas A. Loughran

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  1. Chae M. Jaynes
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Correspondence to Chae M. Jaynes .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Bryanna Fox

  2. Department of Criminology, University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, FL, USA

    Joan A. Reid

  3. College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Anthony J. Masys

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Jaynes, C.M., Loughran, T.A. (2020). How Offender Decision-making Can Inform Policing: A Focus on the Perceived Certainty of Apprehension. In: Fox, B., Reid, J., Masys, A. (eds) Science Informed Policing. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41287-6_1

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