Incentive and Incarceration Effects in a General Equilibrium Model of Crime

Abstract

An intertemporal general equilibrium model of criminal behavior is used to analyze the effect on crime of changing policy parameters. The policy parameters are the length of the prison term, the severity of punishment, and the amount of police resources. The number of crimes in society can be decomposed into an incentive part, an incarceration part, and a crime competition part. The magnitudes of these three components are studied by means of empirical data from England and the US.Crime; Genreal Equilibrium; Incarceration; Incarceration effect