Optimal Leniency and the Organization Design of Group Delinquency

Giovanni Immordino, Salvatore Piccolo () and Paolo Roberti ()

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: We study a simple law enforcement model in which the organizational structure of criminal organizations is endogenous and determined jointly with the amnesty granted to criminals who ip and blow the whistle (leniency program). We allow criminals to choose between a horizontal (partnership) and a vertical structure and study how this choice affects the optimal leniency chosen by a benevolent Legislator whose objective is to minimize crime. We show that when soldiers in vertical organizations have valuable information about the boss, the policy mainly targets vertical hierarchies, leaving horizontal structures proliferate in number. By contrast, when soldiers are poorly informed about their heads, the Legislator implements a policy that completely eradicates partnerships. When the two types of organization coexist, partnerships emerge only for intermediate levels of trust between criminals, while organizations take a vertical structure for low or high levels of trust among felons.

Keywords: Criminal Organizations; Leniency; Organizational Structure; Partnerships; Vertical Hierarchies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 D78 K14 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-06-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-mic and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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