Prior research indicates that individual perceptions of the risk of punishment for criminal behavior are unrelated to actual risks of punishment in the areas in which individuals reside. It could be argued, however, that the relevant policy question is whether variation in actual punishment levels affects average perceptions of risk among aggregates. Scholars have argued that there is “collective wisdom” in the perceptions of collectivities of humans, even if the views of individuals are inaccurate. This thesis is tested using survey data on individual perceptions of the risks of legal punishment for crimes, aggregated up to the level of county populations. The authors find that the aggregate perceptions of county populations are generally not related to actual county levels of the certainty, severity, and swiftness of punishment. Thus, neither the perceptions of individuals nor the average perceptions of populations have any significant association with actual risks of punishment.
BikhchandaniS.HirshleiferD.WelchI. (1998). Learning from the behavior of others: Conformity, fads, and informational cascades. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12, 151-170.
2.
CookP. J. (1980). Research in criminal deterrence. In MorrisN.TonryM. (Eds.), Crime and Justice (Vol. 2, pp. 211-268). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
3.
EricksonM. L.GibbsJ. P. (1978). Objective and perceptual properties of legal punishment and the deterrence doctrine. Social Problems, 25, 253-264.
4.
HorneyJ.MarshallI. (1992). Risk perceptions among serious offenders: The role of crime and punishment. Criminology, 30, 575-592.
5.
JacobH. (1979). Rationality and criminality. Social Science Quarterly, 59, 584-585.
6.
KahnemanD.TverskyA. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263-291.
7.
KennedyD. (1997). Pulling levers: Getting deterrence right. National Institute of Justice Journal, 236, 2-8.
8.
KirmanA. (1993). Ants, recruitment, and rationality. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108, 137-156.
9.
KleckG. (2003). Constricted rationality and the limits of general deterrence. In BlombergT. G.CohenS. (Eds.), Punishment and social control (2nd ed, pp. 291-310). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine.
10.
KleckG.SeverB.LiS.GertzM. (2005). The missing link in general deterrence research. Criminology, 43, 623-660.
11.
LiedkaR. V.PiehlA. M.UseemB. (2006). The crime control effect of incarceration: Does scale matter?Criminology & Public Policy, 5(2), 245-276.
12.
LochnerLance. (2007). Individual perceptions of the criminal justice system. American Economic Review, 97(1), 444-460.
13.
MarvellT. B. (1994). Is further prison expansion worth costs?Federal Probation, 58(4), 59-62.
14.
NaginD. S. (1998). Criminal deterrence research at the outset of the twenty-first century. In TonryM. (Ed.), Crime and justice: A review of research (Vol. 23, pp. 1-42). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
15.
NewportF. (2004). Polling matters: Why leaders must listen to the wisdom of the people. New York: Warner Books.
16.
PageB. I.ShapiroR. Y. (1992). The rational public. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
17.
PaternosterR. (1986). The deterrent effect of the perceived certainty and severity of punishment: A review of the evidence and issues. Justice Quarterly, 4, 173-217.
18.
PaternosterR.SaltzmanL.ChiricosT.WaldoG. (1982). Perceived risk and deterrence: Methodological artifacts in perceptual deterrence research. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 73, 1238-1259.
19.
PhillipsD. P. (1978). The deterrent effect of capital punishment: New evidence on an old controversy. American Journal of Sociology, 86, 139-148.
20.
SeeleyT. D. (2001). Decision-making in superorganisms: How collective wisdom arises from the poorly informed masses. In GigerenzerB.SeltenR. (Eds.), Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox (pp. 249-262). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
21.
SimonH. (1957). Models of man. New York: John Wiley.
22.
SpelmanW. (1994). Criminal incapacitation. New York: Plenum.
23.
SpelmanW. (2000). The limited importance of prison expansion. In BlumsteinA.WallmanJ. (Eds.), The crime drop in America (pp. 97-129). New York: Cambridge University Press.
24.
SpelmanW. (2005). “Jobs or jail? The crime drop in Texas.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 24(1), 133-165.
25.
TverskyA.KahnemanD. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131.
26.
U. S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (1999). National Judicial Reporting Program, 1996 [Computer file]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor].
27.
U. S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2002). Felony sentences in state courts, 2002 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
28.
U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (1997). Crime in the United States 1996. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
29.
U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (1999). Crime in the United States 1998. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
30.
U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2000). Uniform crime reporting data: County-level detailed arrest and offense data, 1998 [Computer file]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor].
31.
VogtW. P. (1993). Dictionary of statistics and methodology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
