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.

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 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 punishment is far more consistent than that for the severity of punishment.”

Certainty, both of being caught and then of possibly being punished, is what works. Continues Nagin, “However, the evidence in support of certainty’s effect pertains almost exclusively to apprehension probability. Consequently, the more precise statement is that certainty of apprehension, not the severity of the ensuing legal consequence, is the more effective deterrent.”

Understanding this idea is therefore hugely important when implementing any security programme or strategy. Not only does it work in conjunction with the physical apparatuses of security such as CCTV cameras, alarms and guard patrols, it also provides an understanding of how and why those things work, and how they don’t.

The importance of being watched

The first use of CCTV technology was in Germany in 1942, when engineer Walter Bruch designed a system for the monitoring of V-2 rockets from a safe distance inside a bunker. The first commercially available CCTV systems were offered by the American company Vericon in 1949, and in 1953, CCTV was used in the U.K. during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Over time, monitoring systems have become ubiquitous in both public and private spaces, and an essential tool of the security industry – it’s estimated that there are currently some 100 million security cameras operating worldwide.

The early use of CCTV in retail stores involved cameras that were bulky and highly visible, with PanTilt-Zoom (PTZ) capability that left customers and staff under no illusion they were being watched, and that any crime they committed was being recorded.

Over time, camera domes were introduced, which protected cameras from damage and made them much less conspicuous, concealing both their view and movements. And because domes were much cheaper than the cameras themselves, soon empty domes were installed with the purpose of acting solely as a deterrent.

As technology progressed from real-time monitoring through recorded tape to digital multiplexing systems with time lapse and motion-only recording, all operated by software, digital monitoring has become a key component in keeping nearly every kind of business secure. Camera surveillance is also now prevalent in public spaces, and increasingly in private residences.

The something of the something

But can camera surveillance be proven as an effective deterrent against crime? A 2017 Justice Department Evidence Brief quotes three meta-analyses from the UK, which found that “CCTV can be effective at reducing crime when tailored to a specific context but did not support the use of CCTV as a more generic widespread crime prevention measure.”

The most recent meta-analysis, from 2008, synthesised the results of 41 studies, finding that CCTV “has a modest but significant effect on crime with an overall reduction of 16 percent.”

Practically, however, it can be very difficult to establish the realworld effectiveness of any theoretical deterrent, cameras included. The Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University in Ontario states plainly that “There may well be more evidence that cameras have little to no deterrent effect, since crime rates and other indicators used to measure deterrence fluctuate greatly after camera surveillance installation.”

Historically, providing tangible, often unassailable evidence of both a crime and its perpetrator(s) was the defining argument for implementing security cameras, and certainly they served to dramatically increase the apprehension, prosecution, and conviction of criminals.

But this success is of course retroactive, not preventative. As we have seen from Nagin, it is the certainty that he or she will be apprehended – caught – that acts as the greatest deterrent to the criminal, and thus prevents the crime.

Active versus reactive deterrence

Surveillance systems are far from the only preventative or deterrent measures security professionals have at their disposal. Recently, however, the combination of technologies into the ‘smart camera’ has allowed these systems to become active rather than passive, leaving potential criminals under no doubt that their activities are being observed.

Whether linked to monitoring stations or not, these cameras use AI and machine learning to differentiate between human and non-human motion; if a human intruder is detected, connected loudspeakers can then play a verbal warning message that a perpetrator is being watched and that security personnel have been dispatched. Having a human voice rather than an alarm indicate awareness of their presence has the almost guaranteed effect of making them leave the property.

Though effective, such a system is still largely reactive, coming into play only once some potentially criminal activity is in progress. Ideally, deterrence should serve to pre-empt even that.

The range of situations that security managers and integrators must anticipate and provide for is of course vast, from protecting physical spaces, property and people to preventing cybercrime. We have covered the important part that certainty of apprehension has in deterring criminal activity, but it is by no means the only factor.

Crime in four dimensions

A study by John S. Carroll in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, ‘A psychological approach to deterrence: The evaluation of crime opportunities,’ maintains that “potential criminals make a few simple comparisons and partial examinations of crime opportunities. It is also argued that the relevant data for studying responses to crime opportunities are individual judgments rather than aggregate statistics.”

Which is to say that the choice to commit any given crime relies on the judgements of the individual in question. In the study Carroll evaluated three outcome gambles consisting of four dimensions: (a) the probability of a successful crime, (b) the money obtained if successful, (c) the probability of capture, and (d) the penalty if caught. What he found was that “Money was the most important dimension, followed by penalty, probability of success, and probability of capture.”

Such a result should not be particularly surprising – most people when contemplating a crime will be most focused on the reward, be it large or small. Unfortunately, this is the factor security practitioners have the least control over, if any. Nor can they dictate the penalty. Indicating to criminals that there is both a lesser probability of success and a greater possibility of capture is the essential nature of active deterrence.

Deterrence as opportunity reduction

One of the most successful and wellknown examples of deterrence is the ‘broken windows’ theory developed by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982 and used to great effect by the New York Police Department in the 1990s.

Wilson and Kelling saw serious crime as the final result of a lengthier chain of events, theorising that crime emanated from disorder and that if disorder were eliminated, then serious crimes would not occur. For security practitioners, what this means is ensuring there are no broken windows, no gaps or cracks in their systems for criminals to observe and exploit. Perception is reality, and it is just as important for a system to appear secure as to be secure.

As Carroll observed, when presented with opportunities for crime, people often make only partial examinations of the circumstance and simple comparisons with other options. Opportunists and amateurs far outnumber career criminals, and even those will soon move on if confronted by a challenge, or if there is an easier opportunity around the corner.

Over the last 50 years, psychological research into crime and its environments has resulted in such concepts as ‘target hardening’, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and ‘defensible space’, all of which explore sophisticated solutions to the problem of deterrence.

But in his “Approaches to Target Hardening” Tom O’Connor says, they are “in essence, the same as the concept of opportunity reduction, except that what matters is that security measures should be visible and send a clear message or signal.” Paradoxically, however, “A determined, clever criminal would probably not be deterred, and some cleverer ones might even be attracted to hardened targets.”

Conning the crims

First, what is cybercrime? A simple definition is that cybercrime are crimes in which computer networks are the target or a substantial tool. This may include illegal hacking, theft of data and/ or denial of service attacks, as well as using the Internet to steal or extort money. But although the medium through which such crimes are committed and the methods employed differ substantially, the psychology of cybercriminals remains essentially the same.

While the tools and strategies for preventing cybercrime – strong authentication, encryption, measures to detect and defeat malware – are readily available, effective deterrents may be scarcer. This has much to do with cybercrime’s non-local nature.

Many if not most cybercriminals operate from other countries, where there is much less to fear in terms of apprehension and punishment. Tracking criminals, too, can be much more difficult through digital networks, though certainly not impossible.

Security practitioners working in the world of digital information already possess the specialist capabilities needed to make the networks they protect as robust as possible. What is necessary is to keep the fundamental precepts of deterrence in mind at all times.

Deterring cybercrime

The fundamental principle of deterrence has been characterised as simply “the process of manipulating an adversary’s cost/benefit calculations to prevent him from doing something you do not want him to do.”

For many criminals, those calculations are often made without much sophistication, or indeed barely made at all. The reality is that opportunities for crime are virtually limitless, and anyone with a will can seek them out.

The other essential truth is that all but the most dedicated and experienced criminals will always take the path of least resistance. If faced with the certainty, real or otherwise, that they will be apprehended, most will choose to look elsewhere. If the reward is observably less than the effort required to gain it, they’ll do likewise. True deterrence is the art of convincing criminals that going elsewhere is the safest thing to do.