IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/amlawe/v4y2002i2p295-313.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Deterrence Hypothesis and Picking Pockets at the Pickpocket's Hanging

Author

Listed:
  • David A. Anderson

Abstract

The tenet that harsher penalties could substantially reduce crime rates rests on the assumption that currently active criminals weigh the costs and benefits of their contemplated acts. Existing and proposed crime strategies exhibit this belief, as does a large and growing segment of the crime literature. This study examines the premise that criminals make informed and calculated decisions. The findings suggest that 76% of active criminals and 89% of the most violent criminals either perceive no risk of apprehension or are incognizant of the likely punishments for their crimes. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • David A. Anderson, 2002. "The Deterrence Hypothesis and Picking Pockets at the Pickpocket's Hanging," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 4(2), pages 295-313.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:4:y:2002:i:2:p:295-313
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Menusch Khadjavi, 2018. "Deterrence works for criminals," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 165-178, August.
    2. Rafael Di Tella & Ernesto Schargrodsky, 2013. "Criminal Recidivism after Prison and Electronic Monitoring," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(1), pages 28-73.
    3. Franklin E. Zimring & Jeffrey Fagan & David T. Johnson, 2010. "Executions, Deterrence, and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(1), pages 1-29, March.
    4. Eide, Erling & Rubin, Paul H. & Shepherd, Joanna M., 2006. "Economics of Crime," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 2(3), pages 205-279, December.
    5. Schoepfer, Andrea & Carmichael, Stephanie & Piquero, Nicole Leeper, 2007. "Do perceptions of punishment vary between white-collar and street crimes?," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 151-163.
    6. Christoph Engel, 2010. "Turning the Lab into Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. A Lab Experiment on the Transparency of Punishment," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2010_06, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised Jun 2018.
    7. MacCoun Robert & Pacula Rosalie Liccardo & Chriqui Jamie & Harris Katherine & Reuter Peter, 2009. "Do Citizens Know Whether Their State Has Decriminalized Marijuana? Assessing the Perceptual Component of Deterrence Theory," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 347-371, June.

    More about this item

    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:oup:amlawe:v:4:y:2002:i:2:p:295-313. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/aler .

    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.