Law Commons^™

Intuitions Of Punishment, Owen D. Jones, Robert Kurzban

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Recent work reveals, contrary to wide-spread assumptions, remarkably high levels of agreement about how to rank order, by blameworthiness, wrongs that involve physical harms, takings of property, or deception in exchanges. In The Origins of Shared Intuitions of Justice (http://ssrn.com/abstract=952726) we proposed a new explanation for these unexpectedly high levels of agreement.

Elsewhere in this issue, Professors Braman, Kahan, and Hoffman offer a critique of our views, to which we reply here. Our reply clarifies a number of important issues, such as the interconnected roles that culture, variation, and evolutionary processes play in generating intuitions of punishment.

Behavioral Genetics And Crime, In Context, Owen D. Jones

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article provides an introduction to some of the key issues at the intersection of behavioral genetics and crime.

It provides, among other things, an overview of the emerging points of consensus, scientifically, on what behavioral genetics can and cannot tell us about criminal behavior. It also discusses a variety of important implications (as well as complexities) of attempting to use insights of behavioral genetics in legal contexts.

"Eggshell" Victims, Private Precautions, And The Societal Benefits Of Shifting Crime, Robert A. Mikos

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Individuals spend billions of dollars every year on precautions to protect themselves from crime. Yet the legal academy has criticized many private precautions because they merely shift crime onto other, less guarded citizens, rather than reduce crime. The conventional wisdom likens such precaution-taking to rent-seeking: citizens spend resources to shift crime losses onto other victims, without reducing the size of those losses to society. The result is an unambiguous reduction in social welfare. This Article argues that the conventional wisdom is flawed because it overlooks how the law systematically understates the harms suffered by some victims of crime, first, by …

The Risks And Rewards Of Criminal Activity: A Comprehensive Test Of Criminal Deterrence, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Whereas previous analyses of criminal deterrence have focused on the effect of criminal enforcement on crime rates, this study analyzes the existence of compensating differentials for criminal pursuits. By analyzing the risk-rewards trade-off, this approach represents a more comprehensive test of the criminal deterrence hypothesis. The sample consisted of black inner-city youths who reported their crime participation, crime income, and self-assessed risks from crime. The risk premiums for the three principal adverse outcomes (arrest, conviction, and prison) constituted between one-half and two-thirds of all crime income on the average, providing strong support for the criminal deterrence hypothesis