Getting the Deterrence Message Out
| Published date | 01 September 2007 |
| Author | Timothy C. O'Shea |
| DOI | 10.1177/1098611107300944 |
| Date | 01 September 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Volume 10 Number 3
September 2007 288-307
© 2007 Sage Publications
10.1177/1098611107300944
Getting the Deterrence
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Message Out
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The Project Safe Neighborhoods
Public–Private Partnership
Timothy C. O’Shea
University of South Alabama
Project Safe Neighborhoods was the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s crime
policy in President Bush’s first term. This is a policy driven by deterrence and incapacitation
and directed at reducing gun violence. In brief, the policy called for federal prosecution
of certain gun crimes that had been previously prosecuted at the local level. The
get-tough-on-crime message was further enhanced by minimum mandatory sentences.
The interesting break from earlier efforts at deterrence and incapacitation was that
Project Safe Neighborhoods provided funds to develop and execute a well-designed
public service campaign to “get the message out there.” Interrupted time-series analysis
of project effects in the Southern District of Alabama points to significantly lower post-
intervention gun crime.
Keywords:
police; deterrence; gun violence; crime prevention
Deterrence and Incapacitation
Deterrence is a core concept around which the criminal justice system is built; it is
an idea that rests on the belief that public policy, in the form of codified law, can
inhibit criminal behavior. Its formal criminological roots date back to the classical
school of criminology (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 1995). The power of the law to deter an
individual from committing crime derives from several assumptions: Humans possess
free will and are capable of making choices; humans are rational, and given a choice
between alternatives, they will choose the one that is most likely to satisfy their self-
interest, however defined; and humans seek pleasure and avoid pain. Given these
simple assumptions, a criminal justice system that can convey a credible link between
violations of the criminal law and swift, certain, and severe punishment for the
violator is likely to affect the nature and extent of crime.
Author’s Note: Please address correspondence to Timothy C. O’Shea, Associate Professor, University of
South Alabama, Political Science and Criminal Justice Department, Humanities 226, Mobile, AL 36688;
e-mail: toshea@usouthal.edu.
288
O’Shea / Getting the Deterrence Message Out
289
Deterrence may take two forms: general and specific. General deterrence refers
to the criminal justice system’s ability, through the threat of punishment, to influence
the decision calculus of anyone who is predisposed to criminal behavior. The statu-
tory law proactively prevents the occurrence of crime. Specific deterrence, on the
other hand, is reactive; it responds to the criminal behaviors of an offender by inca-
pacitating the offender. It seeks to prevent a single offender from repeating, for some
fixed time, the statutorily forbidden act. This type of deterrence is frequently referred
to as incapacitation.
The positivist school of criminology maintained that human behavior was the
product of various forces outside the control of the individual (Lilly et al., 1995).
The motivations for human behavior, including those of a criminal nature, were
controlled by these forces. The only way to influence the nature and extent of
crime, according to those who subscribe to this line of thought, is to identify the
forces that are causally linked to criminal motivation, remove or transform those
forces, and thus change behavior. Punishment, the instrument used to manipulate
the rational calculations of the potential offender, according to a pure positivist
rationale, would be expected to have no effect; any policy that ignores the forces
that drive criminal motivation will, at best, treat symptoms and not causes. In the
end, these policies will not change the nature and extent of crime. At various periods
in the 20th century, the positivist school of criminology had a powerful influence
over criminal justice policy.
There is clearly a fundamental philosophical and theoretical divide that separates the
classical and positivist proponents. The questions and criticisms raised by positivists
have been the participant of empirical research, especially with respect to the notion of
deterrence. Researchers have examined deterrence as it relates to type of crime
(Braithwaite & Geis, 1982; Chambliss, 1969; Weisburd, Waring, & Chayet, 1995), the
offender’s motivation (Shover, 1996), severity or type of punishment (Murray & Cox,
1979), certainty of punishment (Wilson, 1983), size of police force (Loftin &
McDowall, 1982), police tactical operations (Kelling, Pate, Dieckman, & Brown,
1974), minimum mandatory sentencing policies (Loftin, Heumann, & McDowall,
1983; Ramirez & Crano, 2003), and capital punishment (Ellsworth & Ross, 1983).
Although the efforts to explore various aspects of deterrence have been extensive, the
evidence does not support a clear and compelling relationship between the rather
abstract nature of deterrence and the extent of crime.
The evidence notwithstanding, conservative American political philosophy has
always been somewhat uncomfortable with the policy implications of positivist
criminology. Positivist policy implications consist of a broad array of public policy
programs (e.g., employment, a variety of social services, education, etc.) that
propose to manipulate the forces that positivists insist motivate individuals to com-
mit crime. Those who take issue with public policies in keeping with the positivist
framework argue from several positions. Some argue, with scholarly support (e.g.,
Downs, 1967; Niskanen, 1971), that the public sector is inefficient and ineffective
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Police Quarterly
and thus incapable of fulfilling the promise of the positivists. The very institutional
arrangements of the public bureaucracy are flawed and unable to deliver the ser-
vices that they are designed to provide. Others insist that even if public bureau-
cracies did function as promised, the institutions of government preclude the
distribution of public resources to those who need them most, in this case those
from lower socioeconomic groups who are most disposed to crime (Stein &
Bickers, 1995). More important, conservatives maintain that criminal behavior is
not determined but rather is the product of the rational calculations of those who
offend. Although conservative thinkers do not exclude public policy as an instru-
ment to address crime, they do believe that it should be limited and directed toward
influencing the offender decision calculus.
Economists (Becker, 1968; Ehrlich, 1973; Kaplow & Shavell, 1999; Polinsky &
Shavell, 1984; Posner, 1977; Stigler, 1970) have applied the theory of rational choice
to the criminal decision calculus and as such have been instrumental in the reemer-
gence of the classical school (the neoclassical school). A number of criminologists
have adopted the fundamental assumptions and theoretical underpinnings of rational
choice as it applies to crime policy (Clarke & Felson, 1993). Although the array of
criminological approaches that fall within the general rational choice model is broad,
the fundamental assumptions are not: Humans possess free will and are capable of
making choices; humans are rational, and given a choice between alternatives, they
will choose the one that is most likely to satisfy their self-interest, however defined;
and humans will seek pleasure and avoid pain. Public policies implied by the neo-
classical school are likely to be limited to and directed toward influencing the ratio-
nal calculations of those predisposed to criminal behavior. Increase the costs of
offending, and society thus reduces the likelihood of the offender’s choosing the
offense option (i.e., general and specific deterrence).
Not only has rational choice theory opened the academic door for a wide range
of interesting conceptual and empirical activity; it has also provided a compelling
legitimacy around which conservatives can form crime policies more in keeping
with their fundamental political and social philosophy. Whether one agrees with
that philosophy or not, one would be hard-pressed to deny that the academy has
facilitated the design of various crime policies that differ in meaningful ways from
those grounded in the positivist school.
Increasing the Costs of Gun Crime:
Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN)
Background
In February 1997, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Richmond, Virginia, announced
Project Exile, a policy that conformed closely to the neoclassical school. Quite
O’Shea / Getting the Deterrence Message Out
291
simply, the program provided for aggressive enforcement of existing federal statutes.
These statutes called for federal prosecution and minimum mandatory sentencing for
any felon found possessing a firearm. Although state statutes may have existed that pun-
ished individuals for firearm possession, the federal statutes were harsher, and because
of the federal mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, there was no judicial discre-
tion that would permit a community correctional disposition. The implementation of the
policy coincided with a dramatic decline in homicides in Richmond; Project Exile was
credited with that decline. The policy was adopted in several other jurisdictions across
the nation,...
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