Deterring the Undeterrable: Targeting the Marginalized

By: Christina A. Henriquez

The policies of policing and surveilling the marginalized people discussed in Gilliom’s Overseers of the Poor and Beckett and Herbert’s Banished are depicted as policy failures. These policies fail in part because they aim at deterring the undeterrable. Deterrence depends on the idea that a rational actor calculates his costs and benefits of a certain action in order to decide whether he should take that action. Deterrence works by raising the expected costs of an action above the expected benefits. This can occur by either raising the costs of certain actions or increasing the likelihood of being caught and punished for doing those actions. But in order for deterrence to work there must be an alternative action, so when the cost of the undesirable action exceeds the cost of the alternative, the alternative will be taken. However, most of those who are banished or resort to welfare aid do not perceive they have a viable alternative.                                        

These deterrent policies have a minimal chance of working; they merely increase the costs of the only choice the marginalized have. Beckett and Herbert found the policy of banishment to be effective only in cases where people could avoid entering the restricted areas, when there was an alternative. However, both welfare recipients and the banished described their actions as necessary because they lacked an alternative. Welfare moms needed more money to survive on welfare because survival on welfare was impossible. The banished needed the crucial services provided by the restricted areas. They lacked an alternative; they perceived their only choice was violating the policies surveilling and policing them.

These deterrent policies were also ineffective because they aimed at some irrational actors, on whom deterrence would not work. Part of the population targeted widely by these banishment policies referred to by Beckett and Herbert are the mentally ill; which are, by definition, incapable of fully rational calculations. The U. S. Supreme Court applied this analysis  in recent cases regarding the death penalty for actors who are not considered to be fully rational. 

The U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down the death penalty in instances where it would not deter crime meriting capital punishment. In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for juveniles as unconstitutional in part because deterrence could not be expected to work on juvenile offenders in the same way as it does on adults. Imposing the death penalty would be a cruel and unusual punishment because it would lack justification; it would be ineffective as a policy. Justice Kennedy, delivering the opinion of the Court, cites an amicus brief which provides evidence that juveniles often act irrationally because of their lessened mental capabilities. The Court views this decision as an extension of its 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia where it revealed that executing the mentally ill is unconstitutional. The New York Times has an article describing both of these decisions. 

A new approach is needed to control unwanted behavior if the deterrent approach does not work. Beckett and Herbert suggest addressing the underlying issues causing the problems.