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19 Pol'y Stud. J. 2 (1990-1991)

handle is hein.journals/plyssjnl19 and id is 1 raw text is: Policy Studies Journal, Vol 19, No 1, Fall 1990, 2-21 Certainty, Severity, and the Probability of Crime: A Logistic Analysis Scott H Decker and Carol W Kohfeld Social control is a complex process. A vanety of institutions, roles, and groups interact to promote conforming behavior among citizens of a society. One of the most critical institutions seen as producing conformity is the legal system Through the processes of detection, adjudication, and sanctioning a variety of goals are said to be accomplished Among the most important of these is deterrence Indeed, the study of deterrence is one of the oldest traditions associ- ated with examinations of the legal system Such examinations have traditionally focused on the effects of measures of either certainty or seventy of punishment Measures of certainty have typically been identified with three stages of the criminal justice system, arrest, trial, and imprisonment Thus, ratios to determine the likelihood or probability of arrest, sentencing, or incarceration have been constructed as measures of certainty The counterpart to certainty--severity--has been derived from decisions made at a single point in the system, the courts Indicators of seventy are usually represented as the length of sentence or actual amount of time served This study is done in the tradition of past deterrence research, but there are aspects which render it unique. It may be most accurate to characterize this research as using traditional ecological data to address traditional deterrence issues with a methodology specifically focused on addressing policy issues We have used the Pogue dataset (1983), which includes an extensive collection of crime, clearance,criminaljustice system, governmental, demographic, and socio- economic measures to address the issue of deterrence Using data from 48 states (Alaska and Hawaii are missing), we present results of analyses and crime probability plots based upon the use of the logistic model and a related measure of causal effect magnitude we believe to be novel Two models are investigated which use the probability of burglary, larceny, and robbery as the dependent variables The first model compares the impacts of clearance (certainty) and socioeconomic variables,and the second compares the relative impactof different sanctioning strategies (certainty and seventy) in the presence of controls An analytic strategy based on the logistic model has several advantages, not the least of which is its utility for addressing the issue of how much social control is necessary to provide a deterrent. If we observe an inverse relationship between clearances and a crime rate, i e., a deterrent effect, it is valuable to know at what point an increase in clearance results in only a marginal decline in the crimerate Such information can be presented vividly in graphs of changing crime probabilities Thus the results appear in a readily understood form that may be communicated with consequences of different models of deterrence