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Corrupt police

Author

Listed:
  • Klaus Abbink

    (Department of Economics, Monash University)

  • Dmitry Ryvkin

    (Department of Economics, Florida State University)

  • Danila Serra

    (Department of Economics, Southern Methodist University)

Abstract

We employ laboratory experiments to examine the effects of corrupt law enforcement on crime within a society. We embed corruption in a social dilemma setting where citizens simultaneously choose whether to obey the law or to break the law and impose a negative externality on others. Police officers observe citizens' behavior and decide whether to impose fines on law-breakers or, in treatments with corruption, extort bribes from any citizen. In the first study, we find that the presence of police substantially reduces crime, as compared to a baseline setting without police. This is true also when police officers are corrupt. This result is driven by corrupt police officers using bribes in a targeted manner as a substitute for official fines to punish law-breakers. In the second study, we test the effectiveness of two reward mechanisms aimed at reducing police corruption, both of which are based on society-wide police performance measures and not on the observation/monitoring of individual officers. We find that both mechanisms make bribery more targeted toward law-breakers, and one of them leads to a moderate reduction in crime.

Suggested Citation

  • Klaus Abbink & Dmitry Ryvkin & Danila Serra, 2018. "Corrupt police," Working Papers wp2018_09_01, Department of Economics, Florida State University, revised Sep 2018.
    • Handle: RePEc:fsu:wpaper:wp2018_09_01
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    corruption; crime; police; experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior

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