The Late Marron Faculty Member Mark Kleiman

The idea of swift and certain consequences has really come to be kind of a consensus in the field of criminology. And it can be traced to a criminologist by the name of Mark Kleiman, who’s no longer with us, but came up with this really persuasive idea that what matters when it comes to deterring criminal acts is not the severity of the possible punishment, that people are not thinking about, oh, I’m going to get 20 or 30 or 40 years if I do X or Y. What does matter is the likelihood that you’re going to get caught and that you’re going to face some consequence and you’re going to face some fairly swift and immediate consequences for breaking the law.