Optimizing Criminal Behavior and the Disutility of Prison

Giovanni Mastrobuoni () and David Rivers

No 10796, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We use rich microdata on bank robberies to estimate individual-level disutilities of imprisonment. The identification rests on the money versus apprehension trade-off that robbers face inside the bank when deciding whether to leave or collect money for an additional minute. The distribution of the disutility of prison is not degenerate, generating heterogeneity in behavior. Our results show that unobserved heterogeneity in ability is important for explaining outcomes in terms of haul and arrest. Furthermore, higher ability robbers are found to have larger disutilities, suggesting that increased sentence lengths might effectively target these more harmful criminals.

Keywords: sentencing enhancements; severity; deterrence; crime; robberies; disutility of prison (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 K40 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10796.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Optimising Criminal Behaviour and the Disutility of Prison (2019)
Working Paper: Optimizing Criminal Behaviour and the Disutility of Prison (2018)
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:iza:izadps:dp10796

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().