This chapter is the heart of the book; it presents comprehensive deterrence theory (CDT), the reconceptualization of classical deterrence theory. It identifies the core principle of CDT, additional principles that flow from consideration of the intrinsic elements, and predictions that can be made based on them. The chapter presents both a set of core theoretical arguments and a wide range of corollaries that predict when and how legal punishment deters. The theory argues that deterrence consists of all eight intrinsic elements that individually and collectively deter crime. An essential insight from CDT is that there is no universal deterrent effect of a given punishment. Rather, deterrence involves contingent effects that depend on the configuration of the intrinsic elements. Because these can vary greatly, so, too, can the effects of punishment. This insight has profound implications for understanding the limited state of research to date, limited generalizability of many extant studies, and ineffectiveness of many policies. It also has implications for understanding how policy could be improved.

This chapter discusses the current state of research on deterrence, highlighting critical limitations and, again, the need for an approach that can help to advance the field and policy. Review of extant work on specific and general deterrence, objective and perceptual deterrence, experiential effects, and other areas of deterrence scholarship makes clear that additional problems – besides the overly narrow conceptualization of deterrence inherited from the eighteenth-century accounts of it – exist. These problems include a large body of disconnected and inchoate research, the lack of a unifying theory for connecting research findings or generating new questions, incomplete recognition of the elements that inhere in deterrence and their importance to understanding it, limitations in research that derive from the incomplete understanding of deterrence, and the persistent lack of an answer to a basic question: Do legal punishments deter? This state of affairs is what motivated and guided development of the reconceptualized theory of deterrence, comprehensive deterrence theory (CDT), presented in the book.

This chapter identifies eight intrinsic elements that inhere in all deterrence processes. Identifying the elements is a first step in reconceptualizing deterrence theory. The elements include: (1) costs and rewards of crime and non-crime; (2) interaction of punishment certainty, severity, and celerity; (3) the form of the relationship (e.g., linear or curvilinear) between crime and punishment certainty, severity, and celerity; (4) objective costs and rewards of crime and non-crime, along with perceptions of these costs and rewards; (5) personal and vicarious costs of crime and non-crime; (6) personal and vicarious rewards of crime and non-crime; (7) duration of costs and rewards; and (8) punishment levels, changes, and level–change combinations. As discussed in the chapter, some, but not all, elements have been recognized in prior work. In addition, little consideration has been given to systematically investigating the implications of the intrinsic nature of the elements or how they are involved in deterrence processes.