Differential updating and morality: Is the way offenders learn from police detection associated with their personal morals?
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14773708221128515 |
| Author | Florian Kaiser,Björn Huss,Marcus Schaerff |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Differential updating and
morality: Is the way offenders
learn from police detection
associated with their personal
morals?
Florian Kaiser
University of Münster, Münster, Germany
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, Freiburg,
Germany
Björn Huss
University of Hanover/German Centre for Higher Education Research
and Science Studies(DZHW), Hanover, Germany
Marcus Schaerff
University of Münster, Münster, Germany
Abstract
The majority of differential deterrability research has investigated whether people differ in the
extent to which a perceived threat of sanctions deters them from committing a crime. Less is
known about the differential influence of criminal justice intervention on sanction threat percep-
tions. According to deterrence theory, however, for justice intervention to successfully deter
crime, a process of perceptual updating is required. In the current study, we used panel data
from German adolescents to supplement the research on differential updating. We applied fixed
effects regressions to analyze whether people with weaker or stronger morals update their percep-
tions of detection risk differently following experiences of police detection. Our findings suggest
that they do: risk perceptions increased more in adolescents with weak morals than in adolescents
with strong morals when they experienced a higher certainty of detection (a higherdetection rate).
Combined with previous findings on differential deterrence (by personal morality), our results
Corresponding author:
Florian Kaiser, University of Münster, Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, Bispinghof 24/25, 48143
Münster, Germany.
Email: florian.kaiser@uni-muenster.de
Article
European Journal of Criminology
2023, Vol. 20(3) 1061–1080
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14773708221128515
journals.sagepub.com/home/euc
indicate that deterrence processes may—forindividuals with weak morals—play a more critical role
in the prevention of crime than previous nondifferential research has suggested.
Keywords
Perceptual deterrence theory, differential deterrability, differential updating, risk perceptions,
personal morals or morality
Introduction
The main claim of perceptual deterrence theory is that individual sanction threat percep-
tions (i.e., perceptions of the certainty, severity and celerity of punishment) deter poten-
tial offenders from committing crime (see Paternoster, 2018). Confronted with overall
rather meager support for this claim (see Kleck and Sever, 2017; Pratt et al., 2006), per-
ceptual deterrence research has focused more and more on the concept of differential
deterrability, which suggests that the likelihood of deterrence differs across situations
and individuals (Loughran et al., 2018; Piquero et al., 2011). Most of this research has
investigated whether individuals vary in their likelihood of being deterred from criminal
behavior by their perceptions of the certainty of arrest or detection
1
(referred to as risk
perceptions in the following). For this purpose, the research has analyzed potential mod-
erators of the deterrence process, including delinquent peer associations, emotional and
pharmacological arousal, prosocial bonds, and self-control abilities (for reviews, see
Hirtenlehner, 2020; Loughran et al., 2018; Piquero et al., 2011).
Much differential deterrability research has also concentrated on personal morals or
morality (views of what behavior is right or wrong, or good or bad)
2
as a moderator of
deterrence effects. The interest in morality may have originated from Parson’s (1937/
1968) early interpretation of Émile Durkheim’s work that personal morals may make
deterrence considerations irrelevant in some circumstances, operating as a sort of filtering
mechanism. Some form of moral filtering thesis was then introduced into criminology by
various scholars (e.g., Grasmick and Green, 1981; Paternoster and Simpson, 1996; Toby,
1964; Wikström et al., 2012; Wright et al., 2004). Generally, these scholars assume that
strong personal morals decrease the likelihood that an individual sees crime as an alter-
native in the first place. If people, however, do not see crime as a viable alternative, they
have no need to weigh the pros and cons of committing such behavior, making deterrence
considerations irrelevant. Individuals with weaker morals, in contrast, should see crime
much more often as a potent action alternative and within their deliberations on such
behavior deterrence processes should thus play a more prominent role. In line with this
reasoning, a number of empirical studies have found that sanction threat perceptions
deter crime only or especially among individuals with weak morals. Those with stronger
morals, in contrast, generally commit fewer crimes and are typically affected less or not at
all by their perceptions of sanction threat (e.g., Bachman et al., 1992; Hirtenlehner and
Reinecke, 2018; Kroneberg et al., 2010; Paternoster and Simpson, 1996; Svensson,
2015).
However, even if sanction threat perceptions affect individuals with weaker morals,
this does not provide sufficient evidence to conclude that these individuals can be
1062 European Journal of Criminology 20(3)
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