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15 Criminology & Pub. Pol'y 767 (2016)
Objective Risks and Individual Perceptions of Those Risks

handle is hein.journals/crpp15 and id is 771 raw text is: POLICY ESSAY DIRECTIONS IN DETERRENCE THEORY AND POLICY Objective Risks and Individual Perceptions of Those Risks Gary Kleck Florida State University ustin 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 (Kieck 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, 3148 Eppes Hall, 112 S. Copeland Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1273 (e-mail: gkleck@fsu.edu). DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133.12233 © 2016 American Society of Criminology 767 Criminology & Public Policy • Volume 15 - Issue 3

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