Crime, Prosecutors, and the Certainty of Conviction

Horst Entorf

No 5670, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper tests predictions of a structural, augmented supply-of-offenders model regarding the relative effects of police, public prosecution and courts, respectively, on crime. Using detailed data on the different stages of the criminal prosecution process in Germany, empirical evidence suggests that public prosecutors and their influence on the probability of conviction play a major role in explaining the variation of crime rates, while the impact of the severity of punishment is small and insignificant.

Keywords: panel data; public prosecutors; certainty of punishment; general deterrence; informal punishment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 K14 K41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-mic and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: European Journal of Law and Economics, 2015, 39 (1), 167–201 (jointly with Hannes Spengler)

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Journal Article: Crime, prosecutors, and the certainty of conviction (2015)
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