Marginal Deterrence at Work

Rosario Crino (), Giovanni Immordino and Salvatore Piccolo ()

No 6665, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We test the rational economic model of marginal deterrence of law enforcement - i.e., the need for graduating the penalty to the severity of the crime. We combine individual-level data on sentence length for a representative sample of US inmates with proxies for maximum punishment and monitoring costs across US states over 50 years. Consistent with the theory of marginal deterrence, we show that sentence length is increasing in maximum penalty and decreasing in monitoring cost. We also provide evidence that steeper sanctions are associated with less severe crimes, consistent with marginal deterrence being e¤ective. Overall, these findings favor the marginal deterrence framework over competing theories of justice.

Keywords: marginal deterrence; enforcement policies; individual-level data; death penalty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K14 K40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Marginal deterrence at work (2019)
Working Paper: Marginal Deterrence at Work (2017)
Working Paper: Marginal Deterrence at Work (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6665

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