Limiting Court Behavior: A Case for High Minimum Sentences and Low Maximum Ones

Dominique Demougin () and Stephane Pallage

No 101, Cahiers de recherche CREFE / CREFE Working Papers from CREFE, Université du Québec à Montréal

Abstract: We model a simple justice system in which a court is mandated by society to assess the guilt and the punishment of an accused. The court takes prison facilities as given and neglects its impact on the cost to society of implementing the sentence. Clearly, the court, in this world, will condemn more often than society and assign higher penalties. Under these circumstances, society at large would necessarily benefit from having maximum sentences. We show, however, as a series of perverse results, that (1) maximum penalties need to be lower than the highest socially desirable penalty; (2) society would benefit from imposing high minimum sentences even though it is precisely the harshness of courts, which it wants to curb.

Keywords: Maximum and minimum penalties; sentencing guidelines; social optimum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K41 K14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-law and nep-mic
Date: 2000-01
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Forthcoming (latest version), International Review of Law and Economics

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Related works:
Journal Article: Limiting court behavior: a case for high minimum sentences and low maximum ones (2003)
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