Broken Windows: the metaphor has changed New York and Los Angeles. Yet it is far from undisputed whether the broken windows policy was causal for reducing crime. In a series of lab experiments we show that first impressions are indeed causal for cooperativeness in three different institutional...

Does probation pay a double dividend? Society saves the cost of incarceration, and convicts preserve their liberty. But does probation also reduce the risk of recidivism? In a meta-study we show that the field evidence is inconclusive. Moreover it struggles with an identification problem: those...

The most famous element in Bentham's theory of punishment, the Panopticon Prison, expresses his view of the two purposes of punishment, deterrence and special prevention. We investigate Bentham's intuition in a public goods lab experiment by manipulating how much information on punishment...

We develop a theoretical model to identify and compare partial and equilibrium effects of uncertainty and the magnitude of fines on punishment and deterrence. Partial effects are effects on potential violators' and punishers' decisions when the other side's behavior is exogenously given....

In this paper, we analyze the effect of the criminal justice system on juvenile recidivism. Using a unique sample of German inmates, we are able to disentangle the selection into criminal and juvenile law from the subsequent recidivism decision of the inmate. We base our identification strategy...

The article engages in an ideology critique of international criminal law texts and discourse, drawing on a theoretical framework developed by critical legal studies scholars in order to interrogate, in a different jurisprudential context, the assumptions undergirding contemporary international...

A recurring question in international criminal procedure is how to ensure that prosecutors are held accountable for their errors and misconduct. When International Criminal Court (ICC) judges encountered the first serious error by the prosecution in Prosecutor v. Lubanga, they opted for an...

In one of his classical articles, Edwin Sutherland highlighted as early as 1940 the mutual benefits that economists and criminologists could derive from a better integration of their knowledge. Although his interdisciplinary invitation was aimed at white collar crime, other forms of delinquency...

This paper uses a natural experiment to identify the impact of a judicial system reform on police behavior. The study finds that, after a decrease in the severity of judicial punishment imposed on Colombian adolescents, arrest rates for adolescents in most misdemeanor crimes decreased due to a...