All criminal defendants experience this event, albeit these experiences can vary particularly in terms of the amount of time between the date of offense and the date of arrest/jailing. Thus, exploring celerity from this perspective fills an important gap in the literature.Īfter a police contact, detainment via arrest marks a defendant’s first point of contact with the criminal justice system. This is somewhat problematic because the arrest itself (and jailing pretrial), though not a formal sentence, is nothing short of a punishment (see Andenaes, 1966). Further, celerity has historically been defined by the time between arrest and criminal sentence, leaving other ‘punishments’ such as pre-sentence punishments (e.g., arrest and jailing), relatively unexplored.

While a handful of studies have considered the potential deterrent effects of celerity (see Howe and Loftus, 1996, Kleck et al., 2005, Nagin and Pogarsky, 2001, O’Connell et al., 2011, Pestello, 1984) there is little consensus as to whether swift punishment provides for a deterrent effect.

While there is ample empirical evidence assessing the deterrent effects of certainty and much less so with respect to severity (see Nagin, 2013, Piquero et al., 2011), less is known about the effects of celerity, or the time elapsed between the commission of an offense and its punishment. The foundation of the American criminal justice system is based on the assumption that deterrence works. One of the primary concerns of the criminal justice system is to identify, apprehend, and effectively punish law violators.

Celerity used in a sentence