Should the police give priority to violence within criminal organizations? A personnel economics perspective

Christophe Bravard (), Jacques Durieu (), Jurjen Kamphorst, Sebastian Roché () and Stéphan Sémirat ()
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Christophe Bravard: GAEL - Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée de Grenoble - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes - Grenoble INP - Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes
Jacques Durieu: CREG - Centre de recherche en économie de Grenoble - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes
Sebastian Roché: PACTE - Pacte, Laboratoire de sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes - IEPG - Sciences Po Grenoble-UGA - Institut d'études politiques de Grenoble - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes
Stéphan Sémirat: GAEL - Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée de Grenoble - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes - Grenoble INP - Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes

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Abstract: Even among themselves, criminals are not seen as trustworthy. Consequently, a criminal organization needs to incentivize its members, either by threats of violence or by rewarding good behavior. The cost of using violence depends on the resources police allocate to investigating intraorganizational violence. This means that the police may affect the choice of an incentive scheme by the criminal organization. The design of the optimal strategy for crime control has to take this into account. We develop a model of an infinitely repeated criminal labor market where (i) a criminal organization hires and incentivizes members, and (ii) peripheral crime (crime outside the criminal organization) is a stepping stone to a career in organized crime. We establish that there are two possible optimal strategies for the police. (i) There are situations in which the optimal strategy for the police is to use all of their resources to decrease the efficiency of criminals. (ii) In other situations, the optimal strategy for the police is to spend the minimum amount of resources to ensure that the criminal organization cannot punish disloyal criminals, and spend the rest of their resources to decrease the efficiency of criminals.

Keywords: Incentives mechanisms; Organized crime; Police policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
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Published in Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2023, 25 (6), pp.1361-1393. ⟨10.1111/jpet.12666⟩

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Journal Article: Should the police give priority to violence within criminal organizations? A personnel economics perspective (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04217121

DOI: 10.1111/jpet.12666

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