THE SPECIFIC DETERRENT EFFECTS OF CRIMINAL SANCTIONS FOR INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE: A META-ANALYSIS.

• Author: Garner, Joel H.

INTRODUCTION 228 I. LITERATURE REVIEW 231 A. Reviews of Deterrence Research 231 B. Limitations in Deterrence Reviews 234 C. Deterrent Effects of Arrest 235 D. Deterrent Effects of Post-Arrest Sanctions 238 II. DESIGN OF THIS RESEARCH 241 A. Meta-Analytic Methods 241 B. Scope of This Research 242 1. Studies Identified 244 2. Multiple Tests within Studies 248 C. Using the "Best" Test Method 249 D. Alternative Approaches to Addressing Independence 254 III. FINDINGS 256 A. Best Effects 256 B. Study Design Moderators of Deterrent Effects 264 IV. DISCUSSION 268 V. APPENDICES 771 INTRODUCTION

The relationship between criminal sanctions and criminal behavior is an enduring theme throughout classical and contemporary criminological thought. (1) Lawrence Sherman goes so far as to assert that the "conceptual core of criminology is the science of sanction effects...." (2) Scholars have interpreted the relationship between the application of criminal sanctions and subsequent criminal offending in terms of labeling theory, (3) re-integrative shaming, (4) victim empowerment, (5) and defiance. (6) Much of the contemporary scholarly literature on criminal sanctions, like much of the current policy attention, focuses on deterrence theory--the argument that potential offenders are dissuaded from future criminality by the threat of future penalties that are appropriately swift, certain, and severe. (7)

The deterrence framework, articulated by Cesare Beccaria as part of an effort to reduce the severity of the then-common penalties of execution, torture, and lengthy incarceration, (8) is employed in the contemporary American context to support the use of capital punishment; (9) longer prison-sentences; (10) mandatory prison terms for using a firearm in the commission of a felony;" the threat of more severe sanctions for youth violence and drug sales; (12) prosecution for tax evasion; (13) increases in the number of sworn police officers; (14) police foot patrols; (15) hot-spots policing; (16) stop-and-frisk police tactics; (17) arrest for juvenile offenders; (18) arrest of prostitution clients; (19) and arrest, (20) prosecution, (21) conviction, (22) and incarceration (23) for intimate partner violence.

Amidst the violent upheavals of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes asserted that the state's use of criminal sanctions was necessary to preserve the commonwealth, without which life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." (24) A century later in Italy, Cesare Beccaria argued that, while criminal sanctions are necessary, authorities should constrain their use because "[t]he end of punishment, therefore, is no other than to prevent the criminal from doing further injury to society, and to prevent others from committing the like offence." (25) Beccaria's twin goals for punishment provide the groundwork for modern distinctions between specific deterrence--to influence the sanctioned offender--and general deterrence--to influence the behavior of others. General deterrent effects of sanctions are seen as having an indirect impact on the behavior of individuals whether or not they have previously committed an offense or whether they have been sanctioned or not. Specific deterrent effects of sanctions have traditionally been seen as more direct and as only affecting offenders who have been sanctioned. (26) However, our understanding of specific deterrence has been broadened to consider the extent to which avoiding sanctions increases future offending as well as whether being sanctioned reduces future offending. (27)

1. LITERATURE REVIEW

   1. REVIEWS OF DETERRENCE RESEARCH

      The extensive body of research that invokes deterrence theory to interpret the empirical relationships between criminal sanctions and offending has generated a dozen detailed reviews since 1978. (28) These reviews assess a large and diverse body of research that includes a variety of empirically tested hypotheses about whether, to what extent, and in what direction various aspects of contemporary criminal sanctions affect any or all aspects of subsequent criminal behavior. (29) While none of these reviews capture all the composite parts of deterrence theory, they are part of a vibrant, contemporary enthusiasm to clarify the complexities of deterrence theory and to determine the conditions under which deterrent effects can and cannot be found. One consistent theme in these reviews is that detecting the existence and estimating the size of deterrent effects is difficult and that every approach to studying deterrence effects has inconsistent findings, and methodological and measurement limitations. (30)

      Research on general deterrence has long relied on research designs that use official records of actual sanctions to compare the annual number of arrests, police officers, prison populations, or executions with data on offense types, such as homicide, assault, rape, robbery, and burglary, captured in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program. (31) In this macro-level research approach, the number of individual-level sanctions and offenses are aggregated to the level of cities, counties, standard metropolitan statistical areas, or states, and compared between jurisdictions and over time. The recognition of measurement errors in the available data and the inability to resolve disputes over the appropriate identification criteria in macro-level statistical models encouraged evaluators of deterrence theory to study the effects of variation in official sanctions in single locations over time, (32) between treatment and control locations in a particular jurisdiction, (33) among different individuals in a particular jurisdiction, (34) or for the same individuals over time. (35) In the 1970s, Franklin Zimring recommended the use of targeted policy interventions such as clinical trials, longitudinal surveys, matching, propensity scoring, quasi-experiments, bivariate and multivariate analyses, comparisons of nonequivalent treatment and control groups, and even qualitative studies as valuable approaches for testing deterrence theory. (36) Subsequently, evaluations of policy interventions became a major component of the contemporary literature on deterrence theory. (37) While macro-level analyses comparing crime rates between jurisdictions are limited to the study of general deterrence, focused policy interventions can test either general deterrence or specific deterrence, depending primarily on whether the link between sanctions and subsequent offending is analyzed at the individual level or at one or more aggregate levels. Focused policy interventions typically are limited to one or two jurisdictions and this weakens their ability to generalize study findings to other jurisdictions without independent replications in numerous and diverse locations. (38) Although there are additional methodological considerations in the study of focused policy interventions, Daniel Nagin's assessment is that "well-conducted experimental and quasi-experimental studies of deterrence provide the most convincing evidence of the circumstances under which deterrence is and is not effective." (39)

      In addition to macro-level studies and evaluations of focused policy interventions, existing reviews of deterrence research include a substantial body of research that does not rely on the objective properties of punishment (measured by official records) but more directly assesses the role that perceptions of criminal sanctions play in potential offenders' decisionmaking process (measured primarily through in-depth interviews with potential offenders). (40) Just as the macro-level comparisons of sanction policies cannot assess the specific deterrent impact of official sanctions on individuals, evaluations of focused policy interventions based only on official records of sanctions cannot determine how potential offenders make decisions. They can, however, determine whether the association between sanctions and subsequent behavior is or is not in the direction predicted by deterrence theory. While there is general agreement on the importance of understanding the link between official sanctioning behavior and the perceptions of potential offenders about those sanctions, researchers disagree sharply (41) about the extent to which changes in the likelihood or severity of official sanctions are accurately perceived by potential offenders as well as the importance of these perceptions, accurate or not, in offender decisionmaking. Research on offender decision-making, embedded within rational choice theory, includes factors other than criminal sanctions that might better explain the circumstances under which individuals will and will not get involved in one or more types of criminal behavior. (42) Those factors may vary by an individual's personality traits and do not need to be rational assessments of the potential gain or loss involved in offending. (43) Moreover, these factors could include emotions and other irrational considerations that might be especially relevant to understanding violence between intimate partners. (44) Research from the rational choice perspective can also incorporate recent advances in behavioral economics that emphasize the use of heuristics and other mental shortcuts in a wide range of human decision-making. (45) The broader scope of explanatory factors considered within the rational choice perspective will likely enhance our understanding of the relative impact of sanctions in offender decision-making. However, none of the existing studies assessing the impact of prosecution, conviction, or imprisonment on intimate partner violence have collected this type of information from potential offenders. For this reason, our current understanding of the impact of post-arrest sanctions on intimate partner violence is derived from analyses on focused policy interventions.

   2. LIMITATIONS IN DETERRENCE REVIEWS

      The existing reviews of deterrence research have two substantial...