The Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Punishment Certainty and Severity in Crime Prevention

The severity and certainty of the punishments, which are the guidelines of punitive crime prevention, have been the interesting issues for lots of legislators and scholars. According to some punitive crime prevention theories, whatever the severity of penalties (by intensifying the pain of punishments) and the certainty of that (by omitting or decreasing the obstacles of implementing penalties) increase, the rate of crime decrease.Respecting the effectiveness of these two factors in preventing crime, there are some disagreements; so that each of them, in some particular periods of time, has been considered more important, rather than the other. However, some people believe that they both have the same outcome in deterring and preventing crime. According to a third view, considering of the effectiveness of the severity and certainty of punishments, generally and without distinguishing different crimes and criminals, is a false method; because the effectiveness of each of them differs according to different conditions.