Does Punishment Matter? A Refinement of the Inspection Game

We attempt to revise the inspection game used by Tsebelis (1989, 1990, 1993 and Tsebelis in Bianco et al, 1990) to model phenomena in criminal justice. Recent findings from various studies, primarily conducted in the UK, are used to re-construct the game. In contrast to Tsebelis' (1989) propositions, we found that the severity of punishment may affect individuals' offending behaviour. Similar results can be found for the case in which the authority initiates crime prevention initiatives by providing incentives to law abiding individuals. Any attempts to increase the severity of punishment are less certain in reducing individuals' offending behaviour than crime prevention initiatives. This result holds so long as the authority does not alter the levels of enforcement and the severity of punishment.