Local Justice Quality and Crimes

Daria Denti and Marco Di Cataldo ()
Additional contact information
Marco Di Cataldo: Ca' Foscari University of Venice

No 2024-03, Discussion Paper series in Regional Science & Economic Geography from Gran Sasso Science Institute, Social Sciences

Abstract: Being strongly related to certainty of punishment, efficient justice is expected to matter more than the severity of punishment in deterring crimes. However, the evidence supporting this perspective is scarce. This paper estimates the effect of a reform of the criminal justice system that took place in Italy in 2012, evaluating its impact on justice efficiency and crime deterrence. Event study and difference-in-difference estimates reveal that the reform significantly improved the efficiency of criminal courts and deterred property crimes and organised crimes, while violent crimes were not affected. These results support the idea that the deterrence effect of justice efficiency applies particularly to “rational†crimes, while criminals acting under impulsive and less-rational circumstances do not internalise information about justice in their decision-making

Keywords: crime; justice; justice efficiency; deterrence; Italy. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K14 K42 P43 Z18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 73 pages
Date: 2024-02, Revised 2024-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.gssi.it/images/discussion%20papers%20rseg/2024/DPRSEG_2024-03.pdf First version, 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ahy:wpaper:wp47

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper series in Regional Science & Economic Geography from Gran Sasso Science Institute, Social Sciences Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andrea Ascani ().