The Effect of Prosecutorial Actions on Deterrence: A County-Level Analysis

Despite little research examining the effect of celerity of punishment on deterrence, there is evidence that shows celerity does play a role. An assessment of the Hawaii Opportunity Probation With Enforcement (HOPE) program (Hawken & Kleiman, 2009) shows probationers who violate probation and are subject to immediate and certain penalties are significantly less likely to be arrested, have fewer positive drug tests, and have fewer missed probation appointments, when compared with probationers who have uncertain and delayed penalties for violating probation. More evidence was found in a quasi-experimental test of a program similar to the HOPE program implemented in Washington State (Hamilton et al., 2016). Like Hawken and Kleiman (2009), the authors found the use of swift and sure punishments for probationers helped deter probation violations. Furthermore, the authors show that probationers subjected to quicker, more certain punishments had lower rates of recidivism and committed fewer crimes, compared with those probationers in the control group who were not subjected to swift and sure punishments.
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Reconciling the mixed findings in the above studies is difficult. A possible cause of the mixed findings relates to the fact that all the above studies involved specialized courts. Specialized courts (e.g., Drug Court, DUI Court, ECR Court) primarily focus on therapeutic and preventive interventions rather than punitive punishment (Hannah-Moffat & Maurutto, 2012). As such, there may be an interaction occurring between increased celerity but decreased severity. Furthermore, as with the Hamilton et al. (2016) and Hawken and Kleiman (2009) studies, the specialized court studies are examining the specific deterrent effect on offenders rather than the general deterrent effect on a population. Again, we are interested in evaluating the effect prosecutors have on general deterrence.