One of my favorite article titles is The Deterrence Hypothesis and Picking Pockets at the Pickpocket’s Hanging, written by David A. Anderson. It has long been my intuition that, unless eyewitnesses or the police are nearby, most people actively contemplating crime are rarely deterred by the prospect of being caught and are virtually never deterred by marginal differences in the sentence they would receive if convicted. Anderson’s article reinforces that view. As Anderson’s title suggests, in merry old England, pickpockets thought they were so good at their trade they plied it even at the execution of one of their own. Anderson argues that the same dynamic applies today. Based on interviews with prisoners and a review of the literature, Anderson concludes that most violent criminals and the majority of all criminals “are impervious to harsher punishments because no feasible detection rate or punishment scheme would arrest the impelling forces behind their behaviors, which might include drugs, fight-or-flight responses, or irrational thought.” (P. 308.)
But that suggestion has not deterred(!) economists from continuing to focus on the optimal means of preventing crime. In The Economics of Crime: An Introduction to Rational Crime Analysis, Harold Winter, a Professor of Economics at Ohio University, provides a primer of the relevant literature. The opening chapter begins with a question that brings home the importance of economic analysis even if one is predisposed to discount the influence of premeditated cost-benefit calculations on putative criminals. Winter asks, Would you want to live in a society where murders never happen? Winter’s own answer is a strong no: he would “much prefer” (emphasis his) to live in a society in which murders occur. The benefits of a murder-free society would be far outweighed by two costs: the cost—in terms of infringements on freedom and privacy—of an all-out effort to stop homicides and the cost—in terms of diverted resources—to other important societal goals if such an effort were made. Echoing famed economics scholar Gary Becker, Winter suggests that a full cost-benefit calculation may even require factoring in the benefit of crime to the criminal. Overdeterrence can be just as costly as underdeterrence.
For a neophyte to economic analysis like me (and one who is predisposed to distrust it), The Economics of Crime is a useful introduction to the assumptions, methodologies and conclusions of those who look at crime through the cost-benefit lens. Winter makes clear that, as with any empirical science, for each and every study about the economics of crime there is often an equal and opposite study.
Take the debate about whether the certainty of punishment has a greater deterrent impact than the severity of punishment. Most studies find that fear of apprehension is a greater disincentive to crime commission than either the prospect of conviction or the enhancement of sentences. Even so, Becker famously argued that if apprehending criminals can only be achieved through expenditure of significant resources on the police and if punishment can be achieved via a resource-producing system of fines calibrated according to ability to pay, more emphasis might be placed on enhancing the punishment side of the equation, specifically through a well-calibrated fine structure. In response, Winter points out, both those with no ability to pay and those with an infinite ability to do so would probably not be significantly deterred by such a regime; he also notes that a fine-based system can be a temptation to corruption (as illustrated by government abuse of forfeiture laws).
More generally, while numerous studies find that changes in sentence duration have a deterrent impact, other studies, like Anderson’s, find to the contrary. Some studies find that the incapacitative effect of prison yields a net social gain, despite the expense of the prison system, but other studies indicate that incarceration increases post-release recidivism. And so on. I found this summary of the research on the usefulness of police, prisons, and manipulation of sentence lengths particularly intriguing in light of today’s rejuvenated police and prison abolition movement.
Using simple language and examples and avoiding the confusing and often redundant equations one often finds in economic literature, Winter walks the reader through a number of other well-known controversies in criminal law. He has sections or chapters canvassing research on the effectiveness of shaming penalties, the imprisonment of white collar criminals, the privatization of prisons, alternatives to prison, three-strikes laws, the death penalty, the legalization of drugs and the criminalization of addiction, and private efforts to prevent crime (such as purchases of Lojacks, personal guns, and bars on windows). Permeating the book are studies on the extent to which various policies are racially biased or produce racially disparate effects. There is also a chapter making a bow to the expansion of economic analysis beyond the rational-actor model to “behavioral economics” theories that take into account individual differences such as risk aversion/preference, implicit bias, gratification impatience and the like. For someone looking for an entrée into economic reasoning as it relates to crime, this slim volume (133 pages) is well worth a look.
