NCJ Number
146817
Journal
Journal of Legal Studies Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Dated: (June 1993) Pages: 345- 366
Date Published
1993
Length
22 pages
Annotation
Economic analysis is applied to criminal punishments.
Abstract
This article applies an economic analysis to the problem of optimal punishment and how it varies with the damage done, i.e., should the more serious crime always be punished more severely? Also considered is how the possibility of one crime affects the optimal punishment for another. As proposed by the authors as well as others, the obvious intuition is that the punishment for a less serious crime should be minimal so as not to tempt offenders to switch to a more serious crime. The economics, however, are less clear than the intuition. While there is some presumption that the possibility of the more serious crime will lower the optimal penalty for the less serious, the opposite effect is possible. Whether the more serious crime should have the most severe effective punishment also is less clear in the economic analysis than in the intuition. Where two crimes are substitutes but not alternatives, there is no necessary relation between their punishments. Even if effective punishment does increase with severity, the authors contend that this implies that actual punishment increases with severity only if the difficulty of catching an offender is independent of his offense.