Criminal registries, community notification, and optimal avoidance

This paper studies how community notification of criminal registries affects neighborhood behavior and shows that notification is not always optimal. Using a game-theoretic model of a neighborhood, I establish optimal information disclosure policies when law-abiding neighbors’ actions generate inefficiencies. In my model, notification helps to deter criminal activity by making it harder to victimize informed citizens. On the other hand, notification affects the incentives for costly avoidance by law-abiding citizens, which generates negative externalities. My main results highlight the complementary relationship between notification policies and criminal penalties. In particular, I show that notification is always welfare-improving when penalties are large, but can be harmful when penalties are small.