In depth: The Psychology of Deterrence In this second instalment in his ‘psychology of security’ series, David Glynn takes an in-depth look at the psychology or deterrence, writing that true deterrence is the art of convincing criminals that carrying out their criminal intentions elsewhere is the safest thing to do. For the security industry, the adage that ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ is even more important than it is in medicine. Prevention is at the core of all that security practitioners do, and at the heart of prevention lies deterrence.
Although the words may be used interchangeably – and often are – deterrence and prevention are not synonyms. To prevent is to keep something from happening, while to deter is ‘to discourage someone from doing something by instilling doubt or fear of the consequences,’ as defined by the Oxford Dictionary. Its secondary meaning in the Oxford is ‘to prevent the occurrence of,’ and in the combination of these two we find what ‘deterrence’ means, generally, for security practitioners – deterring people so that they are unable or unwilling to commit crimes.
any experience, or indeed anyone who’s ever watched a movie, knows that people will go to extraordinary physical lengths to commit a crime, if they believe the prize is worth it. This may also be accompanied by highly sophisticated planning and logistics – think Ocean’s Eleven or The Great Train Robbery – and such plans do not always fail. On the other hand, much crime is simply opportunism, with an open gate or window or an unattended shop counter enough to inspire someone to steal. And often the potential consequences are not even brought to mind, let alone considered.
The certainty effect There may be some (though probably none in the security professions) who still believe that the threat of punishment acts as an effective deterrent to crime. If that were true, there would be neither crime nor criminals. While actual punishment is part of the process of deterrence, the idea of certainty is in fact far more important. As Daniel S. Nagin, Professor of Public Policy and Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University writes in his essay Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century, “The evidence in support of the deterrent effect of the certainty of
It’s not all in the mind In our previous article, we looked at the psychology of security as being predominately a mental process. When talking about deterrence, we need to take into account both the psychological and the physical. While we can create impediments to crime – fences, locks, the presence of guards – that are both physical and mental, we can also create deterrents which are almost entirely psychological. So, what deters people from committing crime? Anyone with 10
NZSM
June/July 2022
