The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of perceived risk of punishment on offenses in Korean society. Deterrence theory assume a rational offender, and emphasizes the threat of punishment to inhibit wrongful behavior. The deterrent effect of punishment relies on the existence of three factors. These are the severity, certainty, and celerity of the punishment. The empirical researches on deterrence doctrine differs objective approaches from perceived approaches. This study is focus on deterrent effect of perceived risk of punishment, and legal punishment and informal punishment.
The data used in this study were self-reported survey data. A total of 1,118 randomly but systematically selected adult males aged between 20 and 59 living in Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Inchen, Kwangju, Daejon, and Ulsan were interviewed. We utilized the following statistical methods to analyze these data:Correlation and Multiple Regression Analysis. Major findings of our analyses are as follows. Consequently, the data supported the hypotheses that perceived risk of formal and informal punishment is related negatively to law offenses. And it may be said that high SES persons perceived a lower certainty of legal punishment for committing these offences.