Temptation and Crime

Agents often feel conflicted about violating moral norms or statutory laws and regulations. That is, they wish to be law-abiders, but are tempted to violate those laws and at times succumb to that temptation. The standard “Beckerian” model of crime, however, does not adequately capture this internal conflict. In this paper, we propose a model of crime that captures this conflict by building on (Gul and Pesendorfer in Econometrica 69:1403–1435, 2001) model of “temptation” and “self-control.” Within this framework, agents make two-stage decisions: in the first stage they choose with which groups to associate (or which situations to enter) and in the second make decisions concerning crime. Some groups or situations offer more criminal choices, and are therefore more tempting, than others. Thus, the first-stage choice critically determines the extent to which an individual will be exposed to temptation and thereby subsequently commit a crime. We show that individuals with very high levels of self-control completely avoid tempting situations or groups, while those with low levels of self-control behave in a Beckerian world. In an intermediate range, we find that sanctions and commitment levels can be complements. We use this framework to identify implications for deterrence.