General Prevention Revisited: Research and Policy Implications

In a paper written about ten years ago it was complained that while the general preventive effects of criminal law had occupied a central position in the philosophy of criminal law, in penal legislation and in the sentencing policies of the courts, it had been almost totally neglected in the fields of criminology and sociology.It was then stated that practically no empirical research had been carried out on the subject.'This was, in fact, the repetition of similar complaints expressed in a paper written about fifteen years earlier.2 Between the two papers no substantial change had taken place, apart from some research into the effect of the death penalty on murder rates.Today the situation has changed dramatically.From the middle of the 1960's a whole series of research papers on deterrence have been published, and the number seems to be increasing.Two important books have dealt extensively with this topic, 3 and more are in the offing.* This paper was prepared during the author's stay as Hill Foundation Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota, and grew out of a seminar on "Punishment and Deterrence" in the Department of Criminal Justice Studies.The author would like to express his thanks to the faculty members and other participants in the seminar for their stimulating exchange of views.