ABSTRACT
Deterrence is at the heart of the criminal-justice enterprise. Criminal sanctions are intended fill a number of functions—to punish, to fulfill justice, to express the public's standards and priorities, to incapacitate—but they are centrally designed to control: to shape, through the prospect of unpleasantness of various kinds, the behavior of offenders and potential offenders. Deterrence is particularly at the heart of the preventive aspiration of criminal justice. It is not the only such route; various facilitative and rehabilitative measures, such as job training through probation and drug treatment in prison, also hold out this hope. But deterrence, whether through preventive patrol by police officers or mandatory federal prison sentences for firearms offenders, is the principal mechanism through which the central feature of criminal justice, the exercise of state authority, works—it is hoped—to diminish offending and enhance public safety.
