IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ahy/wpaper/wp47.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Local Justice Quality and Crimes

Author

Listed:
  • Daria Denti

    (Gran Sasso Science Institute)

  • Marco Di Cataldo

    (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)

Abstract

Being strongly related to certainty of punishment, efficient justice is expected to matter more than the severity of punishment in deterring crimes. However, the evidence supporting this perspective is scarce. This paper estimates the effect of a reform of the criminal justice system that took place in Italy in 2012, evaluating its impact on justice efficiency and crime deterrence. Event study and difference-in-difference estimates reveal that the reform significantly improved the efficiency of criminal courts and deterred property crimes and organised crimes, while violent crimes were not affected. These results support the idea that the deterrence effect of justice efficiency applies particularly to “rational†crimes, while criminals acting under impulsive and less-rational circumstances do not internalise information about justice in their decision-making

Suggested Citation

  • Daria Denti & Marco Di Cataldo, 2024. "Local Justice Quality and Crimes," Discussion Paper series in Regional Science & Economic Geography 2024-03, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Social Sciences, revised Oct 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:ahy:wpaper:wp47
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.gssi.it/images/discussion%20papers%20rseg/2024/DPRSEG_2024-03.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2020
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    crime; justice; justice efficiency; deterrence; Italy.;
    All these keywords.

    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
    • P43 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems - - - Finance; Public Finance
    • Z18 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ahy:wpaper:wp47. 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: Andrea Ascani (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ssgssit.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.