Deterrence Theory Essay

Juvenile delinquents were committing 13 percent of the violent crimes such as homicide, robbery, rape, kidnapping, and aggravated assault. It was not up until the mid-1990s that those rates started to decline, there are experts who say that the surge of violence came from the children of baby boomers entering what they called "prime crime" years. There are also experts who say the opposite, crime rates will increase by nearly twice as much by 2010. The two completely different predictions lead to the experiment of different strategies to control the violent youth. Soon after these two predictions, problem oriented policing was enforced; it is a mechanism of strategies enforced in order to address problems with disorganized communities. It
This theory was popular during the cold war with regard to the use of nuclear weapons but overall it was a strategy intended to persuade an adversary from taking action first. Deterrence theory assumes that crime can be prevented if potential offenders weight the pros and cons of the crime (Zimring and Hawkins 1973). Three concepts that play an important role in deterrence theory are the certainty, severity, and swiftness of punishment. The deterrent effects of crime prevention programs and policies are a function of a potential offender’s perceptions of the certainty, severity, and swiftness of punishment (Nagin 1998). First, the focus typically begins with an intense focus on specific types of crime and the offenders that are most responsible for carrying out those crimes, most of which involve gun violence. Second, the focus is often referred to as “pulling levers” strategies because they seek to apply every lever available, whether it is formal or informal. Third, which may alter objective sanction risks unlike any of the other two strategies, focus is to seek direct influence perceived sanction risks among offenders by communicating directly with them about the consequences of their