151 research outputs found
Penalty Structures and Deterrance in a Two-Stage Model: Experimental Evidence
No full textIncreasing penalty structures for repeat offenses are ubiquitous in penal codes, despite
little empirical or theoretical support. Multi-period models of criminal enforcement based on the standard economic approach of Becker (1968) generally find that the optimal penalty structure is either flat or declining. We experimentally test a two-stage theoretical model that predicts decreasing penalty structures will yield greater deterrence than increasing penalty structures. We find that decreasing fine structures are more effective at reducing risky behavior. Additionally, our econometric analyses reveal a number of behavioral findings. Subjects are deterred by past convictions, even though the probability of detection is independent across decisions. Further, subjects appear to take the two-stage nature of the decision making task into account, suggesting that subjects consider both current and future penalties. Even controlling for the fine a subject faces for any given decision, being in a decreasing fine structure has a significant effect on deterrence
Correlates of Inter-Generational Transmission of Intimate Partner Violence
No full textIntimate partner violence is a prevalent phenomenon plaguing society, with its negative effects being propagated from one generation to the next. The author hypothesized that there exists a qualitative correlation between male children who witnessed adult males perpetrate violence against females in childhood and subsequent adult onset perpetration of violence against women. After conducting a meta-analysis of 44 peer-reviewed articles, the author found that: (a) children who witnessed interparental IPV manifested increased disturbed behaviors as well as cognitive and emotional impairment corresponding to the severity and frequency of the episodes witnessed; and (b) men who witnessed parental IPV were more likely to perpetrate IPV in their intimate relationships and have more positive attitudes towards abuse
Police Response Time and Injury Outcomes
No full textThe delayed response of law enforcement to calls for service has become a hot button issue when evaluating police department performance. While it is often assumed that faster response times could play an important role in quelling potentially violent incidents, there is no empirical evidence to support this claim. In this paper, we measure the effect of police response time on the likelihood that an incident will result in an injury. To overcome the endogeneity of more severe calls being assigned higher priority, which requires a faster response, we take several steps. First, we focus on the subset of calls for service categorized as ‘Major Disturbance—Violence’ that all receive the same priority level. Second, we instrument for police response time with the number of vehicles within a 2.5-mile radius of the incident at the time it is received by the call center. When controlling for beat, month, and time-of-day fixed effects, this instrumenting strategy allows us to take advantage of the geographical constraints faced by a dispatcher when assigning officers to an incident. In contrast to the OLS estimates, our two-stage least squares analysis establishes a strong causal relationship whereby increasing response time increases the likelihood that an incident results in an injury. The effect is concentrated among female victims, suggesting that faster response time could potentially play an important role in reducing injuries related to domestic violence
Ambiguity and enforcement
No full textLaw enforcement ofcials face numerous decisions regarding their enforcement
choices. One important decision, that is often controversial, is the amount of knowledge that law enforcement distributes to the community regarding their policing
strategies. Assuming the goal is to minimize criminal activity (alternatively, maximize citation rates), our theoretical analysis suggests that agencies should reveal
(shroud) their resource allocation if criminals are uncertainty seeking, and shroud
(reveal) their allocation if criminals are uncertainty averse. We run a laboratory
experiment to test our theoretical framework, and fnd that enforcement behavior is
approximately optimal given the observed non-expected utility uncertainty preferences of criminalsOpen Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institution
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