Court Backlogs and Crime in India

Sofia Amaral and Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay

IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, 2015, vol. 4, issue 2, 86-91

Abstract: We analyze the relationship between a ‘weak judiciary’, as measured by the percentage of pending trials, and the propensity to engage in criminal activities. Using state-level panel data for India from 1995 to 2007, we look at the relationship between crime and court backlogs. Our estimations show that there is a positive relationship between backlogs of cases in state High Courts and property crimes but not violent crimes. We argue that policies that increase the number of judges and justice and policing staff per capita are likely to reduce case backlogs by increasing the speed of investigations and case procedures. This in turn would reduce certain categories of crime.

Keywords: Crime; Violence; Court Backlogs; Weak Judiciary (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2277975215604065 (text/html)

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:sae:iimkoz:v:4:y:2015:i:2:p:86-91

DOI: 10.1177/2277975215604065

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().