Testing Deterrence among High-Risk Juvenile Offenders: Evidence from the Pathways to Desistance Study

This study analyzed the Pathways to Desistance dataset to examine whether principles of deterrence affected offending behaviors in youth categorized as serious juvenile offenders. Deterrence theory is grounded in the classical school of criminology and its rational choice perspective, arguing that individuals weigh the costs and benefits associated with crime and act in ways that maximize benefits and minimize costs. Testing deterrence theory with negative binomial regression across four waves of data demonstrated that deterrence predicted decreases in offending among study participants. These findings support the relevance of deterrence-based strategies in mitigating offending patterns among serious juvenile offenders. They further demonstrate the importance of the perception of legal consequences in shaping decision-making and deterring future criminal behavior in this population.