Greg Pogarsky
Biographic Data
| ID | 224734 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Greg Pogarsky |
| GIVEN NAMES | Greg |
| FAMILY NAME | Pogarsky |
| SIGNATURE | POGARSKY G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Albany, State University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1890-9226 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 441 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Rational choice models of crime decision‐making: A flexible utility framework
Rational choice models of the decision to commit a crime have been prominent in the criminological literature for decades. Their theoretical components, however, remain fragmented, leading to misconceptions about the framework's explanatory power and policy relevance. The present paper aims to synthesize these fragmented theoretical elements and demonstrate the flexibility of rational choice models in accommodating various recent advancements in …
Recency and decay effects in sanction risk updating
Recent tests of deterrence theory have indicated that individuals update perceptions of risk after experiencing an arrest in rational and Bayesian ways. Still, research in psychology has found that the impact of new information and experiences on perceptions is characterized by recency and decay effects, whereby “signals” lead to immediate changes in perceptions, but as time passes, individuals gravitate back toward prior beliefs. Drawing on this…
Moral Salience, Situational Moral Evaluations, and Criminal Choice
Research increasingly aims to better understand criminal behavior in context. Invariably, this entails integrating sociological (and other) perspectives on structure and environment, with psychological and economic notions of individual decision processes. Unique among environmental influences on crime is the immediate context surrounding an offending opportunity. Here we focus on moral context. Perceived choice is often constrained by structural…
Morality, Deterrability, and Offender Decision Making
Deterrence describes a process in which perceived risks and rewards influence offending decisions, whereas deterrability refers to the capacity or inclination to engage in this process. There are alternative forms of undeterrability. Incorrigible individuals offend regardless of how high the potential legal costs are and acute conformists refrain from crime regardless of how low the potential legal costs are. Using data from a nationwide survey o…
Sanction risk perceptions, coherence, and deterrence
Research from environmental criminology, policing, and related literatures consistently finds that objective conditions related to risk of apprehension affect crime. The mechanism underlying this relationship is not explicitly tested; instead, perceptual deterrence is assumed. In this analysis we explicitly investigate that mechanism. This test is not straightforward, however, as some research shows that risk perceptions are susceptible to variou…
Criminal justice decision making in social and legal context: Behavioral economic applications
Nudging and the choice architecture of offending decisions
Research Summary Deterring crime is often considered to be a process of information transmission (e.g., Geerken & Gove, 1975). Economic notions on incentives and choice have meshed well with this perspective (Becker, 1968; Matsueda, 2013). Behavioral economics, however, represents a source of further insights on offender decision‐making, particularly regarding information transmission to promote conformity. Pogarsky, Roche, and Pickett (2018) rev…
Toward a Bifurcated Theory of Emotional Deterrence
Since Hobbes (1957 [1651] and Beccaria (1963 [1764]), scholars have theorized that the emotion of fear is critical for deterrence. Nevertheless, contemporary deterrence researchers have mostly overlooked the distinction between perceived sanction risk and fear of apprehension. Whereas perceived risk is a cognitive judgment, fear involves visceral feelings of anxiety or dread. Equally important, a theory explicating the influence of deterrence on …
Offender Decision-Making in Criminology: Contributions from Behavioral Economics
If there is agency and some decision-making process entailed in criminal behavior, then what are the incentives for crime and for conformity, and what is their role in offending decisions? Incentives have long been the province of economics, which has wide influence in criminology (e.g., Becker 1968 ). However, economics has evolved considerably since Becker's influential model. An important development has been the advent of behavioral economics…
Heuristics and Biases, Rational Choice, and Sanction Perceptions
The relevance of several cognitive heuristics and related biases for rational choice perspectives on crime, and for perceptions of sanction risk, were investigated. We present findings from a series of randomized experiments, embedded in two nationwide surveys of American adults (18 and older) in 2015 ( N = 1,004 and 623). The results reveal that offender estimates of detection risk are less probabilistically precise and more situationally variab…
The Policy‐to‐Perceptions Link in Deterrence: Time to Retire the Clearance Rate
Elaborating the Individual Difference Component in Deterrence Theory
Deterrence theory and criminal justice policy hold that punishment enhances compliance and deters future criminal activity. Empirical research, however, is decidedly mixed, with some studies finding that punishment weakens compliance, some finding that sanctions have no effect on compliance, and some finding that the effect of sanctions depends on moderating factors. In this review, we do not consider whether sanctions affect compliance but inste…
On Ambiguity in Perceptions of Risk: Implications for Criminal Decision Making and Deterrence
Deterrence theorists and researchers have argued that the critical dimension of sanction certainty is its level—increasing the certainty of punishment from a lower to a higher level will inhibit criminal conduct. However, the true certainty of punishment is rarely known with much precision. Both Sherman (1990) and Nagin (1998) have suggested that ambiguity about the level of punishment certainty is itself consequential in the decision to commit o…
The Consequences of Parental Underestimation and Overestimation of Youth Exposure to Violence
This study investigated differences in parent and child estimates of the child's exposure to violence. Using data (N = 1,517) from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, analyses related differences between parent and child reports of the child's exposure to violence to the child's psychosocial functioning. Most parents (66%) underestimated their children's exposure to violence. Further, parental underestimation was associated…
Rational Choice, Agency and Thoughtfully Reflective Decision Making: The Short and Long-Term Consequences of Making Good Choices
Deterrence, Context, and Crime Decision Making
Criminal Records, Employment, & Recidivism
Developmental Outcomes for Children of Young Mothers
This study tested the association between mother's early age at first birth and various life outcomes for her children in later adolescence and early adulthood. Data were analyzed from the Rochester Youth Development Study, an ongoing panel study of adolescents enrolled in seventh or eighth grade in Rochester Public Schools in 1988 (N =729). Boys born to mothers who began childbearing before age 19 had elevated risks of drug use, gang membership,…
Studying the reach of deterrence: Can deterrence theory help explain police misconduct
Projected Offending and Contemporaneous Rule‐violation: Implications for Heterotypic Continuity
This study integrated two methodologies, the vignette‐based survey and the randomized laboratory experiment, to investigate the relationship between projected and actual offending behavior. Findings indicate that respondents' estimates of the likelihood they would drive drunk in a hypothetical vignette were positively correlated with whether they simultaneously cheated on a laboratory task to earn a cash bonus. Implications are discussed for both…
Can Punishment Encourage Offending? Investigating The “resetting” Effect
Several recent studies report that punished individuals appear more likely to offend in the future and believe that the certainty of punishment is lower than do their less punished/unpunished counterparts. This article investigates two competing explanations for the latter finding. Under the selection account, punishment simply identifies the most committed offenders whose certainty estimates, even following punishment, remain lower than those of…
The Delinquency of Children Born to Young Mothers: Results From the Rochester Youth Development Study
This paper examines the relationship between a mother's age at first childbirth and the delinquent behavior of her children. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS), an ongoing longitudinal study of adolescent development, we found that children born to mothers who began childbearing at a young age were more prone to general delinquency, violence, and arrest than were children born to mothers who began childbearing when they …
An Experimental Investigation of Deterrence: Cheating, Self‐serving Bias, and Impulsivity
This paper reports results from a randomized experiment in which 256 participants recruited to complete a survey could earn extra payment by cheating on a quiz. We report the first deterrence experiment that incorporates significant elements of situational and individual difference theories of crime into a single analytic framework. Consistent with extant deterrence research, the prevalence of cheating was lower when detection was more certain bu…
Identifying “deterrable” offenders: Implications for research on deterrence
This article outlines a theoretical framework that distinguishes three forms of responsiveness to legal sanction threats: acute conformist, deterrable, and incorrigible. It then investigates the implications of the framework with data from a perceptual deterrence survey administered to 412 university students. The findings suggest the preeminent empirical regularity in deterrence research—that the deterrent effect of the certainty of punishment f…
Beyond Stafford and Warr's Reconceptualization of Deterrence: Personal and Vicarious Experiences, Impulsivity, and Offending Behavior
Recently, Stafford and Warr identified four categories of experiences hypothesized to underlie judgments about the risk of legal sanctions: personal punishment experience, personal punishment avoidance, vicarious punishment experience, and vicarious punishment avoidance. Using original data to test the Stafford and Warr model, five key findings emerge. First, both personal and vicarious avoidance experiences relate positively to offending. Second…
Integrating Celerity, Impulsivity, and Extralegal Sanction Threats Into a Model of General Deterrence: Theory and Evidence
We propose a model that integrates the extralegal consequences from conviction and impulsivity into the traditional deterrence framework. The model was tested with 252 college students, who completed a survey concerning drinking and driving. Key findings include the following: (1) Although variation in sanction certainty and severity predicted offending, variation in celerity did not; (2) the extralegal consequences from conviction appear to be a…
Projected Offending and Contemporaneous Rule‐violation: Implications for Heterotypic Continuity
This study integrated two methodologies, the vignette‐based survey and the randomized laboratory experiment, to investigate the relationship between projected and actual offending behavior. Findings indicate that respondents' estimates of the likelihood they would drive drunk in a hypothetical vignette were positively correlated with whether they simultaneously cheated on a laboratory task to earn a cash bonus. Implications are discussed for both…
An Experimental Investigation of Deterrence: Cheating, Self‐serving Bias, and Impulsivity
This paper reports results from a randomized experiment in which 256 participants recruited to complete a survey could earn extra payment by cheating on a quiz. We report the first deterrence experiment that incorporates significant elements of situational and individual difference theories of crime into a single analytic framework. Consistent with extant deterrence research, the prevalence of cheating was lower when detection was more certain bu…
Elaborating the Individual Difference Component in Deterrence Theory
Deterrence theory and criminal justice policy hold that punishment enhances compliance and deters future criminal activity. Empirical research, however, is decidedly mixed, with some studies finding that punishment weakens compliance, some finding that sanctions have no effect on compliance, and some finding that the effect of sanctions depends on moderating factors. In this review, we do not consider whether sanctions affect compliance but inste…
On Ambiguity in Perceptions of Risk: Implications for Criminal Decision Making and Deterrence
Deterrence theorists and researchers have argued that the critical dimension of sanction certainty is its level—increasing the certainty of punishment from a lower to a higher level will inhibit criminal conduct. However, the true certainty of punishment is rarely known with much precision. Both Sherman (1990) and Nagin (1998) have suggested that ambiguity about the level of punishment certainty is itself consequential in the decision to commit o…
Toward a Bifurcated Theory of Emotional Deterrence
Since Hobbes (1957 [1651] and Beccaria (1963 [1764]), scholars have theorized that the emotion of fear is critical for deterrence. Nevertheless, contemporary deterrence researchers have mostly overlooked the distinction between perceived sanction risk and fear of apprehension. Whereas perceived risk is a cognitive judgment, fear involves visceral feelings of anxiety or dread. Equally important, a theory explicating the influence of deterrence on …
Heuristics and Biases, Rational Choice, and Sanction Perceptions
The relevance of several cognitive heuristics and related biases for rational choice perspectives on crime, and for perceptions of sanction risk, were investigated. We present findings from a series of randomized experiments, embedded in two nationwide surveys of American adults (18 and older) in 2015 ( N = 1,004 and 623). The results reveal that offender estimates of detection risk are less probabilistically precise and more situationally variab…
Adolescent Mothers and the Criminal Behavior of Their Children
There is little research on the relationship between adolescent motherhood and the criminality of the children. Data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development reveals that children from large families who were born to women who began childbearing early are at greatest risk of criminality. Three alternative explanations for this relationship are explored-the life course-immaturity account, the persistent poor parenting-role model account,…
Studying the reach of deterrence: Can deterrence theory help explain police misconduct
Developmental Outcomes for Children of Young Mothers
This study tested the association between mother's early age at first birth and various life outcomes for her children in later adolescence and early adulthood. Data were analyzed from the Rochester Youth Development Study, an ongoing panel study of adolescents enrolled in seventh or eighth grade in Rochester Public Schools in 1988 (N =729). Boys born to mothers who began childbearing before age 19 had elevated risks of drug use, gang membership,…
Offender Decision-Making in Criminology: Contributions from Behavioral Economics
If there is agency and some decision-making process entailed in criminal behavior, then what are the incentives for crime and for conformity, and what is their role in offending decisions? Incentives have long been the province of economics, which has wide influence in criminology (e.g., Becker 1968 ). However, economics has evolved considerably since Becker's influential model. An important development has been the advent of behavioral economics…
The Policy‐to‐Perceptions Link in Deterrence: Time to Retire the Clearance Rate
The Consequences of Parental Underestimation and Overestimation of Youth Exposure to Violence
This study investigated differences in parent and child estimates of the child's exposure to violence. Using data (N = 1,517) from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, analyses related differences between parent and child reports of the child's exposure to violence to the child's psychosocial functioning. Most parents (66%) underestimated their children's exposure to violence. Further, parental underestimation was associated…
The Delinquency of Children Born to Young Mothers: Results From the Rochester Youth Development Study
This paper examines the relationship between a mother's age at first childbirth and the delinquent behavior of her children. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS), an ongoing longitudinal study of adolescent development, we found that children born to mothers who began childbearing at a young age were more prone to general delinquency, violence, and arrest than were children born to mothers who began childbearing when they …
Sanction risk perceptions, coherence, and deterrence
Research from environmental criminology, policing, and related literatures consistently finds that objective conditions related to risk of apprehension affect crime. The mechanism underlying this relationship is not explicitly tested; instead, perceptual deterrence is assumed. In this analysis we explicitly investigate that mechanism. This test is not straightforward, however, as some research shows that risk perceptions are susceptible to variou…
Nudging and the choice architecture of offending decisions
Research Summary Deterring crime is often considered to be a process of information transmission (e.g., Geerken & Gove, 1975). Economic notions on incentives and choice have meshed well with this perspective (Becker, 1968; Matsueda, 2013). Behavioral economics, however, represents a source of further insights on offender decision‐making, particularly regarding information transmission to promote conformity. Pogarsky, Roche, and Pickett (2018) rev…
Adolescent Mothers and the Criminal Behavior of Their Children
There is little research on the relationship between adolescent motherhood and the criminality of the children. Data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development reveals that children from large families who were born to women who began childbearing early are at greatest risk of criminality. Three alternative explanations for this relationship are explored-the life course-immaturity account, the persistent poor parenting-role model account,…
Integrating Celerity, Impulsivity, and Extralegal Sanction Threats Into a Model of General Deterrence: Theory and Evidence
We propose a model that integrates the extralegal consequences from conviction and impulsivity into the traditional deterrence framework. The model was tested with 252 college students, who completed a survey concerning drinking and driving. Key findings include the following: (1) Although variation in sanction certainty and severity predicted offending, variation in celerity did not; (2) the extralegal consequences from conviction appear to be a…
Identifying “deterrable” offenders: Implications for research on deterrence
This article outlines a theoretical framework that distinguishes three forms of responsiveness to legal sanction threats: acute conformist, deterrable, and incorrigible. It then investigates the implications of the framework with data from a perceptual deterrence survey administered to 412 university students. The findings suggest the preeminent empirical regularity in deterrence research—that the deterrent effect of the certainty of punishment f…
Beyond Stafford and Warr's Reconceptualization of Deterrence: Personal and Vicarious Experiences, Impulsivity, and Offending Behavior
Recently, Stafford and Warr identified four categories of experiences hypothesized to underlie judgments about the risk of legal sanctions: personal punishment experience, personal punishment avoidance, vicarious punishment experience, and vicarious punishment avoidance. Using original data to test the Stafford and Warr model, five key findings emerge. First, both personal and vicarious avoidance experiences relate positively to offending. Second…
Can Punishment Encourage Offending? Investigating The “resetting” Effect
Several recent studies report that punished individuals appear more likely to offend in the future and believe that the certainty of punishment is lower than do their less punished/unpunished counterparts. This article investigates two competing explanations for the latter finding. Under the selection account, punishment simply identifies the most committed offenders whose certainty estimates, even following punishment, remain lower than those of…
The Delinquency of Children Born to Young Mothers: Results From the Rochester Youth Development Study
This paper examines the relationship between a mother's age at first childbirth and the delinquent behavior of her children. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS), an ongoing longitudinal study of adolescent development, we found that children born to mothers who began childbearing at a young age were more prone to general delinquency, violence, and arrest than were children born to mothers who began childbearing when they …
An Experimental Investigation of Deterrence: Cheating, Self‐serving Bias, and Impulsivity
This paper reports results from a randomized experiment in which 256 participants recruited to complete a survey could earn extra payment by cheating on a quiz. We report the first deterrence experiment that incorporates significant elements of situational and individual difference theories of crime into a single analytic framework. Consistent with extant deterrence research, the prevalence of cheating was lower when detection was more certain bu…
Studying the reach of deterrence: Can deterrence theory help explain police misconduct
Projected Offending and Contemporaneous Rule‐violation: Implications for Heterotypic Continuity
This study integrated two methodologies, the vignette‐based survey and the randomized laboratory experiment, to investigate the relationship between projected and actual offending behavior. Findings indicate that respondents' estimates of the likelihood they would drive drunk in a hypothetical vignette were positively correlated with whether they simultaneously cheated on a laboratory task to earn a cash bonus. Implications are discussed for both…
Criminal Records, Employment, & Recidivism
Developmental Outcomes for Children of Young Mothers
This study tested the association between mother's early age at first birth and various life outcomes for her children in later adolescence and early adulthood. Data were analyzed from the Rochester Youth Development Study, an ongoing panel study of adolescents enrolled in seventh or eighth grade in Rochester Public Schools in 1988 (N =729). Boys born to mothers who began childbearing before age 19 had elevated risks of drug use, gang membership,…
Deterrence, Context, and Crime Decision Making
Rational Choice, Agency and Thoughtfully Reflective Decision Making: The Short and Long-Term Consequences of Making Good Choices
Elaborating the Individual Difference Component in Deterrence Theory
Deterrence theory and criminal justice policy hold that punishment enhances compliance and deters future criminal activity. Empirical research, however, is decidedly mixed, with some studies finding that punishment weakens compliance, some finding that sanctions have no effect on compliance, and some finding that the effect of sanctions depends on moderating factors. In this review, we do not consider whether sanctions affect compliance but inste…
On Ambiguity in Perceptions of Risk: Implications for Criminal Decision Making and Deterrence
Deterrence theorists and researchers have argued that the critical dimension of sanction certainty is its level—increasing the certainty of punishment from a lower to a higher level will inhibit criminal conduct. However, the true certainty of punishment is rarely known with much precision. Both Sherman (1990) and Nagin (1998) have suggested that ambiguity about the level of punishment certainty is itself consequential in the decision to commit o…
The Consequences of Parental Underestimation and Overestimation of Youth Exposure to Violence
This study investigated differences in parent and child estimates of the child's exposure to violence. Using data (N = 1,517) from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, analyses related differences between parent and child reports of the child's exposure to violence to the child's psychosocial functioning. Most parents (66%) underestimated their children's exposure to violence. Further, parental underestimation was associated…
The Policy‐to‐Perceptions Link in Deterrence: Time to Retire the Clearance Rate
Offender Decision-Making in Criminology: Contributions from Behavioral Economics
If there is agency and some decision-making process entailed in criminal behavior, then what are the incentives for crime and for conformity, and what is their role in offending decisions? Incentives have long been the province of economics, which has wide influence in criminology (e.g., Becker 1968 ). However, economics has evolved considerably since Becker's influential model. An important development has been the advent of behavioral economics…
Heuristics and Biases, Rational Choice, and Sanction Perceptions
The relevance of several cognitive heuristics and related biases for rational choice perspectives on crime, and for perceptions of sanction risk, were investigated. We present findings from a series of randomized experiments, embedded in two nationwide surveys of American adults (18 and older) in 2015 ( N = 1,004 and 623). The results reveal that offender estimates of detection risk are less probabilistically precise and more situationally variab…
Toward a Bifurcated Theory of Emotional Deterrence
Since Hobbes (1957 [1651] and Beccaria (1963 [1764]), scholars have theorized that the emotion of fear is critical for deterrence. Nevertheless, contemporary deterrence researchers have mostly overlooked the distinction between perceived sanction risk and fear of apprehension. Whereas perceived risk is a cognitive judgment, fear involves visceral feelings of anxiety or dread. Equally important, a theory explicating the influence of deterrence on …
Criminal justice decision making in social and legal context: Behavioral economic applications
Nudging and the choice architecture of offending decisions
Research Summary Deterring crime is often considered to be a process of information transmission (e.g., Geerken & Gove, 1975). Economic notions on incentives and choice have meshed well with this perspective (Becker, 1968; Matsueda, 2013). Behavioral economics, however, represents a source of further insights on offender decision‐making, particularly regarding information transmission to promote conformity. Pogarsky, Roche, and Pickett (2018) rev…
Sanction risk perceptions, coherence, and deterrence
Research from environmental criminology, policing, and related literatures consistently finds that objective conditions related to risk of apprehension affect crime. The mechanism underlying this relationship is not explicitly tested; instead, perceptual deterrence is assumed. In this analysis we explicitly investigate that mechanism. This test is not straightforward, however, as some research shows that risk perceptions are susceptible to variou…
Morality, Deterrability, and Offender Decision Making
Deterrence describes a process in which perceived risks and rewards influence offending decisions, whereas deterrability refers to the capacity or inclination to engage in this process. There are alternative forms of undeterrability. Incorrigible individuals offend regardless of how high the potential legal costs are and acute conformists refrain from crime regardless of how low the potential legal costs are. Using data from a nationwide survey o…
Moral Salience, Situational Moral Evaluations, and Criminal Choice
Research increasingly aims to better understand criminal behavior in context. Invariably, this entails integrating sociological (and other) perspectives on structure and environment, with psychological and economic notions of individual decision processes. Unique among environmental influences on crime is the immediate context surrounding an offending opportunity. Here we focus on moral context. Perceived choice is often constrained by structural…
Crime Patterns and Interventions (23 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Criminology (19 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Deterrence (psychology (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Economics (8 works)