IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v9y2017i2p1-27.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Economics of Rights: Does the Right to Counsel Increase Crime?

Author

Listed:
  • Itai Ater
  • Yehonatan Givati
  • Oren Rigbi

Abstract

We examine the broad consequences of the right to counsel by exploiting a legal reform in Israel that extended the right to publicly provided legal counsel to suspects in arrest proceedings. Using the staggered regional rollout of the reform, we find that the reform reduced arrest duration and the likelihood of arrestees being charged. We also find that the reform reduced the number of arrests made by the police. Lastly, we find that the reform increased crime. These findings indicate that the right to counsel improves suspects' situation, but discourages the police from making arrests, which results in higher crime.

Suggested Citation

  • Itai Ater & Yehonatan Givati & Oren Rigbi, 2017. "The Economics of Rights: Does the Right to Counsel Increase Crime?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 1-27, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:9:y:2017:i:2:p:1-27
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pol.20160027
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20160027
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=HJ-7dDFUh4q00pnYe_Z4DYu4YKZOrRdU
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=rKCYGp3YaKDvvltgfZxwvguEpOOkQbrr
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=B9xalzbq2LNbM8vB4YGv-LPURiIiXXEH
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Levitt, Steven D, 1997. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 270-290, June.
    2. Mirko Draca & Stephen Machin & Robert Witt, 2011. "Panic on the Streets of London: Police, Crime, and the July 2005 Terror Attacks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2157-2181, August.
    3. Ater, Itai & Givati, Yehonatan & Rigbi, Oren, 2014. "Organizational structure, police activity and crime," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 62-71.
    4. Klick, Jonathan & Tabarrok, Alexander, 2005. "Using Terror Alert Levels to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(1), pages 267-279, April.
    5. Matthew D. Shapiro, 2020. "Report of the Editor: American Economic Journal: Economic Policy," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 110, pages 695-702, May.
    6. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    7. Alessandro Barbarino & Giovanni Mastrobuoni, 2014. "The Incapacitation Effect of Incarceration: Evidence from Several Italian Collective Pardons," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 1-37, February.
    8. Evans, William N. & Owens, Emily G., 2007. "COPS and crime," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1-2), pages 181-201, February.
    9. Ben Vollaard & Joseph Hamed, 2012. "Why the Police Have an Effect on Violent Crime After All: Evidence from the British Crime Survey," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(4), pages 901-924.
    10. Hugo M. Mialon, 2005. "An Economic Theory of the Fifth Amendment," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(4), pages 833-848, Winter.
    11. Francesco Drago & Roberto Galbiati & Pietro Vertova, 2009. "The Deterrent Effects of Prison: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(2), pages 257-280, April.
    12. Ilyana Kuziemko, 2013. "How should inmates be released from prison? An assessment of parole versus fixed-sentence regimes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(1), pages 371-424.
    13. Gerald D. Gay & Martin F. Grace & Jayant R. Kale & Thomas H. Noe, 1989. "Noisy Juries and the Choice of Trial Mode in a Sequential Signalling Game: Theory and Evidence," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 20(2), pages 196-213, Summer.
    14. Atkins, Raymond A & Rubin, Paul H, 2003. "Effects of Criminal Procedure on Crime Rates: Mapping Out the Consequences of the Exclusionary Rule," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(1), pages 157-179, April.
    15. Rafael Di Tella & Ernesto Schargrodsky, 2004. "Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces After a Terrorist Attack," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 115-133, March.
    16. David S. Abrams, 2012. "Estimating the Deterrent Effect of Incarceration Using Sentencing Enhancements," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 32-56, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Earnhart, Dietrich & Rousseau, Sandra, 2019. "Are lawyers worth the cost? Legal counsel in environmental criminal court cases," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ater, Itai & Givati, Yehonatan & Rigbi, Oren, 2014. "Organizational structure, police activity and crime," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 62-71.
    2. Gregory De & Marina Toger & Sarit Weisburd, 2023. "Police Response Time and Injury Outcomes," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(654), pages 2147-2177.
    3. Blesse, Sebastian & Diegmann, André, 2022. "The place-based effects of police stations on crime: Evidence from station closures," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    4. Blesse, Sebastian & Diegmann, André, 2019. "Police reorganization and crime: Evidence from police station closures," Working Papers 07/2019, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung.
    5. O’Flaherty, Brendan & Sethi, Rajiv, 2015. "Urban Crime," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1519-1621, Elsevier.
    6. Christophe Bellégo & Joeffrey Drouard, 2019. "Does It Pay to Fight Crime? Evidence From the Pacification of Slums in Rio de Janeiro," Working Papers 2019-08, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    7. Steven N. Durlauf & Daniel S. Nagin, 2010. "The Deterrent Effect of Imprisonment," NBER Chapters, in: Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs, pages 43-94, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Lovett, Nicholas & Xue, Yuhan, 2022. "Rare homicides, criminal behavior, and the returns to police labor," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 172-195.
    9. Cheng, Cheng & Long, Wei, 2018. "Improving police services: Evidence from the French Quarter Task Force," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-18.
    10. Laura Jaitman, 2019. "Frontiers in the economics of crime: lessons for Latin America and the Caribbean," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 28(1), pages 1-36, December.
    11. Tom Kirchmaier & Stephen Machin & Matteo Sandi & Robert Witt, 2020. "Prices, Policing and Policy: The Dynamics of Crime Booms and Busts," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 1040-1077.
    12. Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2021. "Juvenile Punishment, High School Graduation, and Adult Crime: Evidence from Idiosyncratic Judge Harshness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(1), pages 34-47, March.
    13. Elisa Facchetti, 2024. "Police infrastructure, police performance, and crime: Evidence from austerity cuts," IFS Working Papers W24/16, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    14. Philip A. Curry & Anindya Sen & George Orlov, 2016. "Crime, apprehension and clearance rates: Panel data evidence from Canadian provinces," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(2), pages 481-514, May.
    15. Gould, Eric D. & Stecklov, Guy, 2009. "Terror and the costs of crime," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1175-1188, December.
    16. Jordi Blanes i Vidal & Tom Kirchmaier, 2015. "The Effect of Police Response Time on Crime Detection," CEP Discussion Papers dp1376, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    17. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Oscar Volij & Federico Weinschelbaum, 2023. "When do more police induce more crime?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(3), pages 759-778, October.
    18. Mirko Draca & Stephen Machin & Robert Witt, 2011. "Panic on the Streets of London: Police, Crime, and the July 2005 Terror Attacks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2157-2181, August.
    19. Mastrobuoni, Giovanni, 2019. "Police disruption and performance: Evidence from recurrent redeployments within a city," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 18-31.
    20. Anna Bindler & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2021. "The Impact of the First Professional Police Forces on Crime [State Capacity and Economic Development: A Network Approach]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(6), pages 3063-3103.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K10 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - General (Constitutional Law)
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. The Economics of Rights: Does the Right to Counsel Increase Crime? (American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2017) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:9:y:2017:i:2:p:1-27. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.