Profiling restrictions in a model of law enforcement and strategic crime

Cheng Li () and Christopher Cotton
Additional contact information
Cheng Li: Zhongnan University of Economics and Law

European Journal of Law and Economics, 2023, vol. 55, issue 3, No 4, 532 pages

Abstract: Abstract We develop a game-theoretic model of strategic crime in which a criminal organization chooses the profile of the operative it recruits to carry out illegal activities and a law enforcement agency allocates screening capacity across different population groups. Our model incorporates heterogeneity in both criminal effectiveness and recruitment costs across population groups. Restricting the use of profiling by law enforcement officers prevents them from adopting the best response to the criminal organization’s recruitment strategy. But, rather than simply leaving law enforcement worse off, the restrictions can change the recruitment patterns of the criminal organization in ways that could have positive or negative effects on the total amount of successful criminal activity. We formally explore these mechanisms. Whether profiling restrictions reduce crime depends on how different types of heterogeneity across population groups are aligned. When profiling restrictions do reduce crime, weak restrictions on the use of profiling are generally more effective than strong restrictions.

Keywords: Strategic crime; Criminal recruitment; Screening; Profiling restriction; Law enforcement effectiveness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10657-023-09766-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:kap:ejlwec:v:55:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s10657-023-09766-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10657

DOI: 10.1007/s10657-023-09766-9

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Law and Economics is currently edited by Jürgen Georg Backhaus, Giovanni B. Ramello and Alain Marciano

More articles in European Journal of Law and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().