Society Versus Jury: A Case for Limiting Behavior

Dominique Demougin () and Stephane Pallage

No 9907, Cahiers de recherche du Département des sciences économiques, UQAM from Université du Québec à Montréal, Département des sciences économiques

Abstract: We model a simple justice system in which a jury is mandated by society to assess the guilt and the punishment of an accused. Jurors are assumed to be almost perfect representatives of society, but they ignore the cost to society of implementing the sentence. As a result the jury is shown to condemn more often and to higher penalties than society would find it optimal. We show that imposing upper and lower limits to penalties helps to align the jury's objective with society's.

Keywords: Jury; optimal sentence; crime; trial; asymmetric information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K14 K41 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-law, nep-mic, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-pub
Date: Written 1999-08
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