Deterrence Theory In Criminal Justice

Laws, rules, and new ideas are always being put into action in an attempt to deter the criminal yet they rarely ever reduce serious crime. Attempting to deter the criminal by placing more officers on the ground, implementing longer jail and prison sentences, or fear tactics have proved to solve the issue of deterring the criminal. Many offenders feel they are invincible and therefore no threat exists for them and will continue the behavior. I am pretty confident that most criminals do not make conscious decisions since a large majority of them are stealing, robbing, and resorting to violence in an effort to support a drug habit.
Walker (2015) cites four problems associated with the deterrence theory; communicating the message, understanding …show more content…
The loophole perception is grossly misunderstood and rarely utilized with the exception of plea bargaining. Plea bargaining is an effective measure in criminal justice system and is how most cases are resolved. A defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge or bargains for a shorter sentence. Surprisingly the insanity pleas and filing of appeals are rarely utilized if they succeed but the media plays this up in celebrated cases giving the illusion that this is a major …show more content…
134). There are many surveys on the use and abuse of drugs that provide information on the statistics and background of drug users. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health along with Monitoring the Future Study has provided information about the use of drugs by adolescents and adults. Data from these studies suggest that, “patterns of drug use increase rapidly during adolescence, peak with early adulthood, and then decline” (p. 194). Drug experimentation begins during adolescence as means to display independence, but early adulthood use often represents more independence and lack of parental authority. Additionally there is a misconception that individual’s from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, African Americans, and Hispanics are predisposed to utilize illegal drugs during adolescence. In actuality whites are utilizing illegal substances at higher rates during adolescence but as they age the trend shifts to those with lower levels of education, rural areas, inner cities which often is correlated with African Americans and Hispanics. Legal drugs show slight similarities to illegal drugs. Alcohol use peaks around the age of 21 as adults become of legal drinking age, this pattern is fairly universal with respect to gender and race. Mosher & Akins (2014) report, “The abuse of psychoactive prescription drugs…has increased substantially over the last twenty years” in