NCJ Number
141109
Date Published
1990
Length
34 pages
Annotation
An economic model is presented in which an individual's perceptions and the resulting choices regarding crime are determined endogenously, based on information that is limited, largely from acquaintances and self, and partly based on the probability that a crime will be punished.
Abstract
By considering the individual's perceptions as endogenously determined, the model differs from the literature based on Becker's important study. In this literature, an individual's perceived probability of punishment is typically handled as an exogenous parameter that is the same for all individuals and is equal to the actual probability of punishment. The model developed in this paper can be aggregated to the entire economy to yield dynamic relationships linking certain features of the economy, including past crime rates, to individuals' current choices and then to the current crime rates in different societal groups. These relationships suggest a possible way of understanding some observed crime patterns. They also suggest insights concerning issues such as how criminality might evolve over time in a society, why two societal groups with roughly similar economic parameters might have different crime rates, and why crime might spill over across different societal groups. Footnotes, figure, appended methodological information, and 27 references