Profiling, Screening and Criminal Recruitment

Christopher Cotton and Cheng Li

No 2013-02, Working Papers from University of Miami, Department of Economics

Abstract: We model major criminal activity as a game in which a law enforcement officer chooses the rate at which to screen different population groups and a criminal organization (e.g., drug cartel, terrorist cell) chooses the observable characteristics of its recruits. Our model best describes smuggling or terrorism activities at borders, airports and other security checkpoints. When the social costs of crime are high, law enforcement is most-effective when it is unconstrained in its ability to profile, that is its ability to screen different population groups with different probabilities. For more-moderate costs, the most-effective law enforcement policy imposes only moderate restrictions on the officer's ability to profile. In contrast to models of decentralized crime, eliminating profiling by law enforcement is never optimal.

Keywords: Racial profiling; law enforcement; national security; smuggling; terrorism; crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 H56 J78 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2012-08-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.herbert.miami.edu/_assets/files/repec/WP2013-02.pdf First version, 2012 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Profiling, Screening, and Criminal Recruitment (2015)
Working Paper: Profiling, screening and criminal recruitment (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mia:wpaper:2013-02

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