Fear of legal consequences is the weakest of all deterrents to crime.

Evidence

The most powerful deterrent to criminal conduct operates through self-sanctions. People constantly preside over their own behavior and have to live with their self-evaluation. In this mode of self-regulation, individuals do not transgress because it results in self-condemnation. Indeed, many adhere to the law not because they fear legal penalties but because they subscribe to the values embodied in the law. Hence, they would be law abiding on the basis of self-sanctions alone even if there were no legal penalties. Evaluating the incremental deterrent force of these various sanctions requires assessment of all three forms—legal, social, and self-evaluative. Tittle (1977) studied various sanctions that deter young adults from a wide array of illegal activities. Lawful behavior was best predicted by moral self-sanctions and fear of social censure. Fear of legal consequences was the weakest contributor in the triadic mix. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1384

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to vault claims about why ordinary people comply with or disengage from harmful policy — the mechanism for sanction-driven conformity rather than internalized belief.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1384