Certainty Perceptions in the Court: Relevance for Plea and Offender Decision Making Scholars

• In Event: The Multitude of Elements Surrounding Guilty Pleas: An Interdisciplinary Panel

Abstract

Perceptions of the certainty of arrest, prosecution, and conviction are all constituent pieces of certainty of punishment, which is a key component of deterrence scholarship and broader work on offender decision making (Nagin, 2013). Nagin (2013) discusses these elements as paralleling a sequence of conditional probabilities, but the offender decision making literature has nearly exclusively focused upon certainty of arrest. Plea decision making scholars are also heavily concerned with certainty perceptions, but more limited to the likelihood of conviction, and how that perception shapes willingness to take a plea deal, often under a ‘shadow of the trial’ model. We seek to employ certainty perceptions as a construct-based linkage to cross the offender decision making scholarship with the plea decision making scholarship. Preliminary results from student and national samples on prosecution certainty and conviction certainty perceptions will be discussed along with the broader relevance and measurement of certainty perceptions from the court for both offender and defendant decision making scholars.

Authors

• Theodore Wilson, University at Albany, SUNY

• Shi Yan, Arizona State University

• Matthew Kijowski, University at Albany, SUNY

• Jacob Forston, Arizona State University