IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cesifo/v60y2014i3p581-598..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Punishment as Defiance: Deterrence and Perverse Effects in the Case of Expressive Crime

Author

Listed:
  • Martin A. Leroch

Abstract

Expressive crime contrasts with instrumental crime in that delinquents do not seek material benefits. Law breakers are motivated by the desire to ‘make a statement’, possibly against majority attitudes in the society. Fighting expressive crime is complicated by this fact in that increasing intervention may have counter effects. In this article, I present a model of expressive crime. Delinquents are motivated to perform the illegal action because it transmits a signal. If the punishment associated with the crime affects the value of this signal positively, an increase in punishment may serve as defiance, and not as deterrence. Accordingly, the number of law violations may increase if those defied outnumber the deterred. Throughout the analysis, I refer to the case of graffiti spraying in Germany. It has been argued that this case offers an example for an increase in law violations after an increase in available punishment. This claim is discussed with reference to available data. Implications for other forms of expressive crime are drawn. (JEL codes: K14, K42, D03)

Suggested Citation

  • Martin A. Leroch, 2014. "Punishment as Defiance: Deterrence and Perverse Effects in the Case of Expressive Crime," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 60(3), pages 581-598.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cesifo:v:60:y:2014:i:3:p:581-598.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cesifo/ift009
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Koji Domon & Alessandro Melcarne & Giovanni B. Ramello, 2019. "Digital piracy in Asian countries," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 46(1), pages 117-135, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

    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:cesifo:v:60:y:2014:i:3:p:581-598.. 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://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.