The Feyerabend lectures on natural right is Kant’s first clear statement of a view on punishment that balances retributivist and deterrence concerns. Kant’s earlier views, shown by other course lectures on ethics, were largely focused on deterrence. As Kant developed his view of human autonomy, he shifted his reasoning about punishment to include concern for the honor and dignity of the victim as well as the criminal, including right of criminals to be treated no worse than they treated others.

Although there is a substantial body of research addressing the economic motivations for drug crime, fewer studies have also considered the social influences that shape individuals’ involvement in the illicit drug economy. This chapter will draw on interviews conducted in prisons in Indonesia with people convicted of drug offences. Analysis suggests that many offenders do have economic motivations for entry into the drug trade. However, personal and relational motivations for drug use and drug trading must not be ignored, given that most of our participants were not in absolute poverty when they decided to offend. Moreover, in making decisions about participation in the drug trade, they were clearly influenced by trusted peer groups. The chapter presents this empirical data within the context of increasingly punitive penalties for drug offences in Southeast Asia, including the judicial execution of drug traffickers.

This chapter examines the War Department’s role in the formation of US policy toward the European war and the growing crisis in the Pacific between the Fall of France in June 1940 and the Pearl Harbor attacks in December 1941. This chapter argues that the War Department played a pivotal role in shaping American policy and actions in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, but in different ways. In the Atlantic, the War Department was a primary impetus within the Roosevelt administration for increasingly interventionist policies. It consistently pushed President Roosevelt to act and influenced the politics of his decision-making at several crucial junctures. The War Department provided the crucial nexus between the executive branch, Congress, and outside pressure groups as the US moved toward war. In the Pacific, the War Department pressed for a firm stand against Japan but helped muddle Far Eastern policy by working to undermine the State Department’s more cautious stance. This bureaucratic warfare made it difficult to foster consensus around US deterrence actions and contributed to worsening relations between Washington and Tokyo, setting the stage for the Pacific War.

This chapter considers the “tripwire effect” claim that states sometimes deploy small troop contingents abroad to tie hands. The tripwire effect proposes that the deaths of even small numbers of foreign deployed troops would force the state to become involved, tying its hands to abide by a commitment to defend an ally. The chapter explains why states do not do this. States see tripwire effects as not reliably bolstering deterrence, and if states do fear that tripwire effects could tie their hands and drag them into an unwanted war, they remove troops in order to reduce escalation risks and keep their hands untied. The chapter examines the canonical case of alleged tripwire troop deployments, American deployments of small force contingents to Europe in the Cold War. The chapter demonstrates that neither the Truman, Eisenhower, or Kennedy administrations deployed small troop contingents in order to deter Soviet aggression via tripwire effects. During the 1958–1959 and 1961 Berlin Crises, when the US recognized the possibility that troop deaths might tie American hands and drag it into an unwanted war over Berlin, the US took steps to reduce the likelihood of such deaths and of escalation. It chose flexibility over tied hands.

This chapter revisits the book’s central argument and conclusions from each chapter. It concludes that there has been substantial misunderstanding about core aspects of deterrence, which can be addressed by working from a comprehensive approach to theorizing deterrence and using this approach to guide and evaluate research. The chapter also concludes that most extant deterrence-based policies cannot and will not appreciably deter crime, and may even worsen it. The solution lies in policies grounded in stronger science built on better theory and research. Our sincere hope is that comprehensive deterrence theory (CDT) provides a helpful step in that direction.

This chapter discusses policy implications that flow from comprehensive deterrence theory (CDT). The account points to many implications. Perhaps foremost is the conclusion that there simply is insufficient research to ground deterrence-based policies. There are, though, other equally important implications. The chapter argues that, based on CDT, many deterrence-based policies are likely to be ineffective and may increase rather than decrease crime. At the same time, it is likely that deterrence-based policies can be effective, but only under certain conditions. We extend this reasoning to argue that CDT can be used to inform deterrence-based policies in jails and prisons as well as schools.

This chapter discusses the centrality of deterrence to criminological theory and to policy, and then highlights critical shortcomings in classical deterrence theory. It points to critical problems that these shortcomings create, including incomplete or inaccurate understanding of deterrence and ineffective policy. The chapter then describes the motivation for the book, which is to advance theory and policy, the structure of the book, each of the chapters, and recommendations for sequences of chapters readers can follow to pursue their particular interests.

This chapter describes the origins of deterrence theory and problems with the overly narrow conceptualization of deterrence. It discusses the problems within the context of contemporary criminology and criminal justice policy. Many policies rest on weak or inaccurate understanding of deterrence, or are premised on research that has limited generalizability. One example: A great deal of criminal justice policy focuses only on punishment severity as a way of influencing deterrence, but one can increase deterrence in other ways, such as increasing the certainty of punishment or increasing the rewards of non-crime.

This chapter addresses the weaknesses of tax penalties in current law as deterrents of high-end tax noncompliance and describes how Congress could introduce tax penalties that vary depending upon taxpayers’ means. The chapter begins with a discussion of the possible motivations for individual tax compliance, including potential adverse consequences of noncompliance and, specifically, civil tax penalties. It then considers why current civil tax penalties often fail to deter high-end tax noncompliance. Finally, the chapter presents means-adjusted tax penalties as a new approach to the design of civil tax penalties, illustrates this approach with several examples, and addresses additional concerns.

This chapter describes two areas of legal theory that consider when means-based adjustments to legal rules may not be desirable. Under one perspective, means-based adjustments designed for redistributive purposes should be reserved for the tax system alone, since introducing means-based adjustments to other legal rules would entail greater efficiency costs. A second literature considers the desirability of a legal system that is impartial, nondiscriminatory, and general in its application. Subjecting taxpayers to different legal rules based on means could also undermine these important criteria. This chapter considers how means-based adjustments to the tax compliance rules should be evaluated from each of these perspectives, and why they would be justified even in cases where means-based adjustments to other legal rules would not be.

This chapter identifies ten lessons for international relations that emerge from the book.

This chapter presents latent nuclear deterrence theory. It explains how it is possible to gain international leverage from a nuclear program if countries do not have nuclear weapons.

This chapter addresses when nuclear latency leads to nuclear weapons proliferation and arms races. It shows that under certain conditions, nuclear latency can deter rivals from arming. In other situations, however, nuclear latency can foment nuclear weapons proliferation. It includes six case studies of nuclear proliferation: Argentina, Brazil, France, India, Pakistan, and South Africa.

This chapter conducts a statistical analysis of nuclear latency’s political consequences. Using a design-based approach to causal inference, it determines how the onset of nuclear latency influences several foreign policy outcomes: fatal military disputes, international crises, foreign policy preferences, and US troop deployments.

This chapter presents case studies from ten countries: Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Iran, Japan, Pakistan, South Africa, South Korea, and Spain. These cases show that many world leaders believe that nuclear latency provides greater international influence.