Legality and Reality: Some Evidence on Criminal Procedure

William Landes ()

No 40, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: There is widespread concern that the criminal justice system, particularly in large urban areas, is breaking down under the strain of an increasing demand for its services and inadequate resources. At the center of the system, located between the police and the prisons, are the criminal courts. Statistics on rising crime rates, recidivism, arbitrary sentencing practices, court delay, and prison riots are taken as further evidence that the courts are failing. What has been notably scarcer is systematic empirical research on the criminal court system - research that can contribute to our understanding of the actual workings of the system and enable us to develop policies for improvement. The purpose of this study is to begin to remedy this deficiency by applying the quantitative techniques of economics to an analysis of some important issues in criminal court procedure.

Date: 1974-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published as Landes, William M. "Legality and Reality: Some Evidence on Criminal Procedure." Journal of Legal Studies, (June 1974).

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w0040.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:nbr:nberwo:0040

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w0040

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().