Rewards versus Imprisonment

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-2021

Journal Title

American Law and Economics Review

ISSN

1465-7252

DOI

10.1093/aler/ahab011

Abstract

This article considers the possibility of simultaneously reducing crime, prison sentences, and the tax burden of financing the criminal justice system by introducing rewards, which operate by increasing quality of life outside of prison. Specifically, it proposes a procedure wherein a part of the imprisonment budget is redirected towards financing rewards. The feasibility of this procedure depends on how effectively the marginal imprisonment sentence reduces crime, the crime rate, the effectiveness of rewards, and how accurately the government can direct rewards towards individuals who are most responsive to such policies. A related welfare analysis reveals an advantage of rewards: they operate by transferring or creating wealth, whereas imprisonment destroys wealth. Thus, the conditions under which rewards are optimal are broader than those under which they can be used to jointly reduce crime, sentences, and taxes. With an exogenous [resp. endogenous] budget for law enforcement, it is optimal to use rewards when the imprisonment elasticity of crime is small [resp. the marginal cost of public funds is not high]. These conditions hold, implying that using rewards is optimal, in numerical examples generated by using estimates for key values from the empirical literature.

First Page

432

Last Page

480

Num Pages

49

Volume Number

23

Issue Number

2

Publisher

American Law and Economics Association

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