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This essay compares two alternative economic theories of crime, due to Becker (1968) and Adelstein (2017), which differ with respect to the purpose of punishment. Both models are based on the idea of rational offenders and punishments as prices, but they part company with respect to how the level of punishment is, or should be, determined. Whereas Becker's approach is based on the normative goal of welfare maximization and optimal deterrence, Adelstein's model emphasizes that the system actually pursues corrective justice in individual cases. This essay explicates these different perspectives and explores their implications for social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conduct laboratory experiments to investigate the effects of deterrence mechanisms under controlled conditions. The effect of the expected cost of punishment of an individual's decision to engage in a proscribed activity and the effect of uncertainty on an individual's decision to commit a violation are very difficult to isolate in field data. We use a roadway speeding framing and find that (a) individuals respond considerably to increases in the expected cost of speeding, (b) uncertainty about the enforcement regime yields a significant reduction in violations committed, and (c) people are much more likely to speed when the punishment regime for which they voted is implemented. Our results have important implications for a behavioral theory of deterrence under uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the hypothesis of the stability of punishment as developed by Blumstein and his associates against Dutch prison data. After summarizing the existing empirical evidence, Dutch prison data are presented pertaining to the average daily population in penal institutions, on the one hand, and the number of admissions in these institutions, on the other hand. In three ways it is tested whether these data do support the hypothesis: regression analysis, Box-Jenkins analysis, and the analysis of a few dynamic models as presented by Berk et al. (1981). The paper ends with discussing Blumstein's hypothesis and considers the way research into the extent of the prison population should be continued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the intrinsic relativity of social tolerance toward crime, the rate of punishment that a given society inflicts on its criminals is expected to remain relatively constant over the long term, in spite of social changes and increasing or decreasing crime rates. This paper reconstructs the penal behavior of Montreal's criminal justice from 1845 to 1913 and finds that the stability hypothesis, all things considered, works quite well and has much heuristic value. Three problems, somewhat bypassed in the existing literature, are dealt with here: the reliability of penal statistical time series, the direct empirical evidence of stabilization processes, and a rather crude way of measuring prison punishment. It is suggested, furthermore, that the stability hypothesis include in its future argument the impact of increasing policing and that it be confined tentatively to modern western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]