Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
Abstract
In the law enforcement literature there is a presumption—supported by some experimental and econometric evidence—that criminals are more responsive to increases in the certainty than the severity of punishment. Under a general set of assumptions, this implies that criminals are risk seeking. We show that this implication is no longer valid when forfeiture of illegal gains and the possibility of unsuccessful attempts are considered. Therefore, when drawing inferences concerning offenders’ attitudes toward risk based on their responses to various punishment schemes, special attention must be paid to whether and to what extent offenders’ illegal gains can be forfeited and whether increases in the probability of punishment affect the probability of attempts being successful. We discuss policy implications related to our observations.
Keywords
crime, deterrence, risk preferences, punishment
Publication Title
Journal of Legal Studies
Repository Citation
Klick, Jonathan and Mungan, Murat C., "Forfeiture of Illegal Gains, Attempts and Implied Risk Preferences" (2014). All Faculty Scholarship. 1388.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1388
Included in
Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, Econometrics Commons, Legal Theory Commons, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons, Public Policy Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons, Social Policy Commons
Publication Citation
43 J. Legal Stud. 137 (2014).