I. We would like a legal system that permits efficient crimes (the lost hunter who breaks into a cabin) and efficient torts. One way of getting it it is by legal rules under which those who commit such acts are not liable (the defense of necessity in criminal law, negligence in tort law). Another is by setting punishments so that the efficient acts will still be committed even though the perpetrator is liable. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?
II. In what sense are some punishments more efficient than others? Compare the efficiency of imprisonment, flogging, and stigma as punishments. How might your answer change if we included incapacitation in the calculation as a benefit--a negative cost--of (some) punishments?
1. Some punishments are more efficient in the sense of having a lower ratio of punishment cost to amount of punishment.
2.Stigma produces a net benefit, since the information generated by conviction provides net value to potential employers etc. Flogging has punishment cost roughly equal to amount of punishment. Imprisonment has punishment cost equal to amount of punishment plus cost of maintaining the prison. So the inefficiency, the ratio of punishment cost to amount of punishment, is greatest for imprisonment, then flogging, then stigma.
3. Adding in incapacitation provides a benefit from imprisonment, so might conceivably make it a more efficient punishment than flogging, and perhaps even than stigma.
III. A particular crime creates an amount of damage D each time it is committed.
A. Assume that we can and do, at no cost, catch and punish the perpetrator of half the offenses. What ought the punishment to be? Why?
B. What are the costs that make up the punishment cost of a one year jail sentence?
C. If catching and punishing criminals is costly, is the efficient level of punishment higher than the answer to part A, lower, or sometimes higher and sometimes lower? Explain briefly.
IV. A particular crime does $2000 of damage each time it is committed. The table below shows how the enforcement cost (apprehension cost plus punishment cost) and number of offenses vary with the effective penalty. What should the penalty be? Briefly justify your answer. Note that total enforcement cost is falling as effective penalty increases; why might that happen?
V. We deter a crime with a punishment lottery--some probability of being caught, convicted, and subject to some punishment. Briefly explain how, in principle, we would calculate the efficient combination of probability and punishment. You will find it helpful to do the problem in two stages:
1: For any level of deterrence, find the optimal combination that produces it.2. Find the optimal level of deterrence.
VI. Answer one of the following two questions:
A. Explain briefly, in your own words, what "the optimal number of automobile accidents" means and why it is not zero.B. Explain briefly, in your own words, what "the optimal number of murders" means. Is it zero? explain.
VII. Suppose that some offense is currently punished by imprisonment. Someone proposes a practical way of replacing imprisonment with an equivalent fine; assume his proposal will work. He argues that the change is clearly an improvement; criminals are no worse off, victims are no worse off, and instead of spending money on prisons we can collect fines and use them to help pay for the police force. What arguments might you offer against his proposal?