Objective Risks and Individual Perceptions of Those Risks

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12233
• Author: Gary Kleck
• Published date: 01 August 2016
• Date: 01 August 2016

POLICY ESSAY

DIRECTIONS IN DETERRENCE THEORY

AND POLICY

Objective Risks and Individual Perceptions

of Those Risks

Gary Kleck

Florida State University

Justin Pickett and Sean Roche (2016: 727–751) have performed a valuable service to the

criminological community in focusing our attention on the key unstated assumption

underlying not only the recent article by Nagin, Solow, and Lum (2015; hereafter

“NSL”) but also a host of other recent studies defending the deterrence doctrine: the

assumption that there is a close connection between objective risks of legal punishment

of crime and individual perceptions of those risks. The fact that NSL left this essential

assumption unstated is part of why it was so pernicious, in addition to it almost certainly

being wrong. It is harder for readers to recognize dubious assumptions when authors do not

explicitly state them, never mind admit the existence of evidence casting strong doubt on

them.

NSL (2015) were certainly not the first deterrence researchers to make this assumption.

All macro-level deterrence researchers, regardless of discipline, have relied on the assump-

tion that actual levels of legal punishment serve as good proxies for perceived levels of

punishment. Economists, however, seem to be especially oblivious to (a) the fact that the

assumption is essential to their conclusions and (b) the existence of evidence casting grave

doubt on it. Perhaps this is because more than 80% of deterrence research published in

economics journals has been macro-level research, and this work would have little to say

about deterrence if there were little or no association between perceived and actual levels of

punishment (Kleck and Sever, in preparation).

What is the foundation for the claim that there is a negligible association between

perceptions of punishment risks and actual risks? In an article published more than a decade

ago, Kleck, Sever, Li, and Gertz (2005) reported that survey data from a large nationally

representative sample of the adult residents of large urban counties indicated that there was

Direct correspondence to Gary Kleck, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University,

314B Eppes Hall, 112 S. Copeland Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1273 (e-mail: gkleck@fsu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12233 C2016 American Society of Criminology 767

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 15 rIssue 3