Mobile criminals, immobile crime: the efficiency of decentralized crime deterrence

Martin Gregor () and Lenka Stastna ()

No 2009/18, Working Papers IES from Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies

Abstract: In this paper we examine a class of local crimes that involve perfectly mobile criminals, and perfectly immobile criminal opportunities. We focus on local non-rival crime deterrence that is more efficient against criminals pursuing domestic crimes than criminals pursuing crimes elsewhere. In a standard case of sincerely delegated politicians and zero transfers to other districts, we show that centralized deterrence unambiguously dominates the decentralized deterrence. With strategic delegation and voluntary in-kind transfers, the tradeoff is exactly the opposite: Decentralization achieves the social optimum, whereas cooperative centralization overprovides for enforcement. This is robust to various cost-sharing modes. We also examine the effects of the growing interdependence of districts, stemming from criminals' increasing opportunities to strategically displace. Contrary to the supposition in Oates's decentralization theorem, increasing interdependence makes centralization less desirable.

Keywords: crime mobility; crime deterrence; decentralization; strategic delegation; side payments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 H73 H76 R50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2009-05, Revised 2009-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig, nep-pbe and nep-ure
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