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Articles 31 - 60 of 64

Full-Text Articles in Criminal Law

Detection Avoidance, Chris William Sanchirico Nov 2005

Detection Avoidance, Chris William Sanchirico

ExpressO

In practice, the problem of law enforcement is half a matter of what the government does to catch violators and half a matter of what violators do to avoid getting caught. In the theory of law enforcement, however, although the state’s efforts at "detection" play a decisive role, offenders’ efforts at "detection avoidance" are largely ignored. Always problematic, this imbalance has become critical in recent years as episodes of corporate misconduct spur new interest in punishing process crimes like obstruction of justice and perjury. This article adds detection avoidance to the existing theoretical frame with an eye toward informing the …


Password Theft: Rethinking An Old Crime In A New Era, Daniel S. Shamah Nov 2005

Password Theft: Rethinking An Old Crime In A New Era, Daniel S. Shamah

ExpressO

This is a discussion of the legal and economic ramifications of password theft.


A Law And Economics Perspective On Terrorism, Nuno M. Garoupa , Jonathan Klick, Francesco Parisi Sep 2005

A Law And Economics Perspective On Terrorism, Nuno M. Garoupa , Jonathan Klick, Francesco Parisi

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

This paper reviews the existing law and economics literature on crime, noting where various models might apply to the terror context. Specifically, it focuses on two strands of the literature, deterrence and incapacitation. Challenging the conventional application of the basic rational agent model of crime in the context of terrorism, it considers anti-terror measures enacted by different countries, highlighting how the details of the laws correspond to the insights from economic models of crime. In conclusion, the paper proposes an efficient sorting mechanism in which individuals will be provided with adequate incentives to reveal their type to law enforcement authorities.


Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor Sep 2005

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.


Prisons Of The Mind: Social Value And Economic Inefficiency In The Criminal Justice Response To Mental Illness, Amanda C. Pustilnik Aug 2005

Prisons Of The Mind: Social Value And Economic Inefficiency In The Criminal Justice Response To Mental Illness, Amanda C. Pustilnik

ExpressO

This Article employs a “New Chicago School” law and economics analysis to examine why the staggering economic and human costs of channeling non-violent mentally ill adults and children into the criminal system not only are countenanced but embraced by voters and lawmakers. Analyzing legislation, statements by lawmakers and jurors, and historical sources, the Article contends that certain social value is created through the incarceration of this marginalized group. That is, there is a taste for the punishment of these people that incarceration satisfies but that therapeutic alternatives would not. The willingness to pay for this contestable taste keeps entrenched this …


Life V. Death: Or Why The Death Penalty Should Marginally Deter, Charles N. W. Keckler Aug 2005

Life V. Death: Or Why The Death Penalty Should Marginally Deter, Charles N. W. Keckler

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

Econometric measures of the effect of capital punishment have increasingly provided evidence that it deters homicides. However, most researchers on both sides of the death penalty debate continue to rely on rather simple assumptions about criminal behavior. I attempt to provide a more nuanced and predictive rational choice model of the incentives and disincentives to kill, with the aim of assessing to what extent the statistical findings of deterrence are in line with theoretical expectations. In particular, I examine whether it is plausible to suppose there is a marginal increase in deterrence created by increasing the penalty from life imprisonment …


Deterring Roper’S Juveniles: Why Immature Criminal Youth Require The Death Penalty More Than Adults – A Law & Economics Approach, Moin A. Yahya Aug 2005

Deterring Roper’S Juveniles: Why Immature Criminal Youth Require The Death Penalty More Than Adults – A Law & Economics Approach, Moin A. Yahya

ExpressO

In Roper v. Simmons, the United States Supreme Court declared the death penalty for juveniles unconstitutional. It relied on three reasons, one of which concerns this article, namely the theory that juveniles are less culpable and deterrable than adults. The Court relied on the American Medical Association’s amicus brief which purported to show scientifically that juveniles had less developed brains than adults. The Court characterized juveniles as being risk-lovers who highly preferred the present over the future, who loved gains no matter how risky but did not care for losses, and who could not engage in proper cost-benefit analysis, because …


Partial Ban On Plea Bargains, Oren Gazal Aug 2005

Partial Ban On Plea Bargains, Oren Gazal

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

The influence of the plea bargaining system on innocent defendants is fiercely debated. Many scholars call for a ban on plea bargaining, arguing that the practice coerces innocent defendants to plead guilty. Proponents of plea bargaining respond that even an innocent defendant is better off when he choose to plea bargain in order to assure a lenient result, if he concludes that the risk of wrongful trial conviction is too high. They claim that since plea bargaining is only an option, it cannot harm the defendant whether he is guilty or innocent. This paper argues that the both supporters and …


An Economic Analysis Of The Private And Social Costs Of The Provision Of Cybersecurity And Other Public Security Goods, Bruce H. Kobayashi Apr 2005

An Economic Analysis Of The Private And Social Costs Of The Provision Of Cybersecurity And Other Public Security Goods, Bruce H. Kobayashi

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

This paper examines the incentives of private actors to invest in cybersecurity. Prior analyses have examined investments in security goods, such as locks or safes that have the characteristics of private goods. The analysis in this paper extends this analysis to examine expenditures on security goods, such as information, that have the characteristics of public goods. In contrast to the private goods case, where individual uncoordinated security expenditures can lead to an overproduction of security, the public goods case can result in the underproduction of security expenditures, and incentives to free ride. Thus, the formation of collective organizations may be …


The New Deterrence: Crime And Policy In The Age Of Globalization, Patrick Keenan Apr 2005

The New Deterrence: Crime And Policy In The Age Of Globalization, Patrick Keenan

ExpressO

Globalization has made it much easier for criminal activity to cross borders, but deterrence theory has not kept up with this changed reality. I draw insights from both law-and-economics and criminology literature to enrich our understanding of deterrence. I ground my theoretical discussion in the real-world problem of sex tourism as an example of the kind of unwanted activity that now crosses borders and has complicated our understanding of deterrence. I focus on two issues central to deterrence that have not gotten sufficient scholarly attention: the phenomenon of displacement and the role of status. I argue that informal sanctions, as …


Organizational Misconduct: Beyond The Principal-Agent Model, Kimberly D. Krawiec Feb 2005

Organizational Misconduct: Beyond The Principal-Agent Model, Kimberly D. Krawiec

ExpressO

This article demonstrates that, at least since the adoption of the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines in 1991, the United States legal regime has been moving away from a system of strict vicarious liability toward a system of duty-based organizational liability. Under this system, organizational liability for agent misconduct is dependant on whether or not the organization has exercised due care to avoid the harm in question, rather than under traditional agency principles of respondeat superior. Courts and agencies typically evaluate the level of care exercised by the organization by inquiring whether the organization had in place internal compliance structures ostensibly designed …


Knowledge And Power In The Mechanical Firm: Planning For Profit In Austrian Perspective, Richard Adelstein Dec 2004

Knowledge And Power In The Mechanical Firm: Planning For Profit In Austrian Perspective, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A theory of central planning employing Austrian themes and applied to private firms and Taylorism.


Whistle Blowing, Ben Depoorter, Jef De Mot Nov 2004

Whistle Blowing, Ben Depoorter, Jef De Mot

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

For law enforcement purposes corruption and fraud are hard battles. Because of the highly secretive and premeditated nature of these crimes, prime witnesses are themselves often implicated in the fraudulent transaction. Promises of immunity and whistle blowing rewards are often required to resolve these information asymmetries. These insights have set a trend, both in scholarship and law enforcement practice, towards reward-based approaches (carrots), as an alternative or complement to punishment based deterrence (sticks). Applying the U.S. False Claims Act (FCA) as an analytical framework, we provide a critical review of the efficiency limitations of whistle blowing. More specifically, the formal …


The Law And Economics Of Cybersecurity: An Introduction, Mark F. Grady, Francesco Parisi Nov 2004

The Law And Economics Of Cybersecurity: An Introduction, Mark F. Grady, Francesco Parisi

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

One of the most controversial theoretical issues of our time is the governance of cybersecurity. Computer security experts, national security experts, and policy analysts have all struggled to bring meaningful analysis to cybersecurity; however, the discipline of law & economics has yet to be fully applied to the issue. This introduction presents work by leading national scholars who examine this complex national security challenge from a law and economics perspective. The focus spans from a discussion of pure market solutions to public-private issue analysis, providing a valuable basis for policy considerations concerning the appropriate governmental role on the issue of …


Screening, Plea Bargains And The Innocent Problem, Oren Gazal Nov 2004

Screening, Plea Bargains And The Innocent Problem, Oren Gazal

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

Courts in common law countries reject plea-agreements only when the agreed upon sentence is seen as exceedingly lenient. This judicial intervention is designed to ensure that plea-bargaining does not undermine deterrence. Many legal scholars argue against this policy, claiming that courts should prohibit plea-bargaining all together. They argue that the plea-bargaining system increases the risk of wrongful convictions. Economists often criticize this judicial intervention as well, but for a different reason. Rather than advocating the abolition of plea-bargaining, many economists argue that the courts should accept all plea-agreements without review. They claim that plea-bargaining can help ensure an efficient use …


Corporate Defendants And The Protections Of Criminal Procedure: An Economic Analysis, Vikramaditya S. Khanna Sep 2004

Corporate Defendants And The Protections Of Criminal Procedure: An Economic Analysis, Vikramaditya S. Khanna

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

Corporations are frequently treated as “persons” under the law. One of the fundamental questions associated with this treatment is whether corporations should receive the same Constitutional protections and guarantees as natural persons. In particular, should corporations receive the Constitutional protections of Criminal Procedure? After all, corporations cannot be sent to jail so the sanctions they face are essentially the same as in civil proceedings. If so, then why not have the same procedural protections for corporate defendants in civil and criminal cases? Little scholarly analysis has focused on this issue from an economic perspective and this article aims to fill …


The Market For Criminal Justice: Federalism, Crime Control And Jurisdictional Competition, Doron Teichman Sep 2004

The Market For Criminal Justice: Federalism, Crime Control And Jurisdictional Competition, Doron Teichman

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

For the most part, the United States has a decentralized criminal justice system. State legislatures define the majority of crimes and set out the punishments for those crimes. In addition, the enforcement of criminal laws lies, in most cases, in the hands of local law enforcement agencies. This article points out how this decentralized structure drives local jurisdictions to harshen their criminal justice system in order to displace crime to neighboring jurisdictions. More precisely, local jurisdictions can attempt to displace crime in two distinct ways. First, they can raise the expected sanction to a level that is higher than that …


Sex, Shame, And The Law: An Economic Perspective On Megan's Law, Doron Teichman Sep 2004

Sex, Shame, And The Law: An Economic Perspective On Megan's Law, Doron Teichman

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

This Article focuses on the question, how should policymakers aiming to minimize the cost of sanctioning utilize legal and nonlegal sanctions when designing a system of criminal sanctions. After presenting the general economic case for the use of nonlegal sanctions the article turns to present a model of shaming, which unlike existing models, incorporates the endogenous effects of legal and nonlegal sanctions. This model demonstrates that tailoring an efficient regime that combines legal and nonlegal sanctions might be more difficult than previously perceived by law and economics scholars. A specific case study presented in this article is of the current …


A Public Choice Theory Of Criminal Procedure, Vikramaditya S. Khanna, Keith N. Hylton Aug 2004

A Public Choice Theory Of Criminal Procedure, Vikramaditya S. Khanna, Keith N. Hylton

ExpressO

We provide a more persuasive justification for the pro-defendant bias in Anglo-American criminal procedure than the most commonly forwarded justifications to date. The most commonly forwarded rationale for the pro-defendant bias is that the costs of false convictions – specifically, the sanctioning and deterrence costs associated with the erroneous imposition of criminal sanctions – are greater than the costs of false acquittals. We argue that this rationale provides at best a partial justification for the extent of pro-defendant procedural rules. Under our alternative justification, pro-defendant protections serve primarily as constraints on the costs associated with improper enforcement or rent seeking …


Equity And Efficiency In Markets For Ideas, Richard Adelstein Dec 2001

Equity And Efficiency In Markets For Ideas, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

Intellectual property and patent protection in light of the AIDS crisis in Africa.


Toward A Comparative Economics Of Plea Bargaining (With Thomas Miceli), Richard Adelstein Dec 2000

Toward A Comparative Economics Of Plea Bargaining (With Thomas Miceli), Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A comparison of adversarial and inquisitorial approaches to criminal adjudication and its implications for plea bargaining.


Victims As Cost Bearers, Richard Adelstein Dec 1998

Victims As Cost Bearers, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A brief recasting of the price exaction model.


Four Entries, Richard Adelstein Dec 1997

Four Entries, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

Four entries: "American Institutional Economics and the Legal System" (I: 61-66); "John Rogers Commons" (I: 324-327); Richard Theodore Ely" (II: 28-29); and "Plea Bargaining: A Comparative Approach"


Deciding For Bigness, Richard Adelstein Dec 1990

Deciding For Bigness, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

Antitrust as a constitutional constraint on the growth of firms.


The Competition Of Technologies In Markets For Ideas: Copyright And Fair Use In Evolutionary Perspective (With Steven Peretz), Richard Adelstein Dec 1984

The Competition Of Technologies In Markets For Ideas: Copyright And Fair Use In Evolutionary Perspective (With Steven Peretz), Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A theory of intellectual goods as distinct from public or private goods, and the rationale for copyright that flows from it.


The Plea Bargain In England And America: A Comparative Institutional Approach, Richard Adelstein Dec 1980

The Plea Bargain In England And America: A Comparative Institutional Approach, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A comparative view of adjudication by guilty plea in the US and the UK.


Institutional Function And Evolution In The Criminal Process, Richard Adelstein Dec 1980

Institutional Function And Evolution In The Criminal Process, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

An extended development of the foundations of the price exaction model of the criminal process.


The Moral Costs Of Crime: Prices, Information And Organization, Richard Adelstein Dec 1978

The Moral Costs Of Crime: Prices, Information And Organization, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

More on price exaction, and punishments as conveyors of cost information in the criminal process.


Informational Paradox And The Pricing Of Crime: Capital Sentencing Standards In Economic Perspective, Richard Adelstein Dec 1978

Informational Paradox And The Pricing Of Crime: Capital Sentencing Standards In Economic Perspective, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A further development of the price exaction model and an application to the problem of sentencing standards.


The Negotiated Guilty Plea: A Framework For Analysis, Richard Adelstein Dec 1977

The Negotiated Guilty Plea: A Framework For Analysis, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

An early exposition of the price exaction framework and the place of plea bargaining in it.