Studying the reach of deterrence: Can deterrence theory help explain police misconduct?
✍ Scribed by Greg Pogarsky; Alex R Piquero
- Book ID
- 104021253
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2004
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 214 KB
- Volume
- 32
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0047-2352
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This article reports the first perceptual deterrence study of a sample of police officers. The study investigated the influence of traditional deterrence considerations, extralegal sanctions, and impulsivity on the intention to commit several hypothesized acts of police misconduct. The results were largely consistent with perceptual deterrence findings from samples of college students, experienced offenders, and corporate managers. In particular, this study found that both legal and extralegal sanction threats potentially deter police misconduct. Further, it found that impulsivity diminished the deterrent influence of both sanction forms. The study also found that some of the effects of the explanatory variables depended on whether officers had prior punishment experience. The article discusses the implications of its findings for combating police misconduct and for deterrence research generally.