There is growing interest in crime prevention through early youth interventions; yet, the standard United States response to the crime problem, particularly among juveniles, has been to increase the use and resource allocation allotted toward punishment and incapacitation and away from...

We examine the relationship between ownership structure and corporate crime. Our approach draws upon two lines of research: (1) the theory of the firm which poses ownership as a critical incentive mechanism and (2) the economic theory of corporate crime, which emphasizes the role played by top...

This paper examines the role of privatization on the cost of government-provided services. We examine data on the cost of housing public and private prisoners from all 50 states over the time period 1996-2004, and find that the existence of private prisons in a state reduces the growth in per...

This paper explores the legal and economic theories, and empirical evidence of government-imposed punishment for corporate wrongdoing. Among the questions addressed are: What is the purpose of corporate criminal law? How are sanctions to be determined? When should firms versus individuals be...

This paper reports on a new methodology to estimate the "cost of crime." We adapt the contingent valuation method used in the environmental economics literature to estimate the public's willingness-to-pay for reductions in crime. In a nationally representative sample of 1300 U.S. residents, we...

The use of benefit-cost analyses by criminal justice researchers has slowly been increasing over the past 30 years. While still in its infancy, benefit-cost analyses of criminal justice policies have recently moved from the academic arena to actual use by policy makers. The growing use of...

During a recent study of how 1991 federal sentencing guidelines have affected the penalties that federal courts impose on public corporations, we performed an independent evaluation of the quality of the data on corporate sanctions that the U.S. Sentencing Commission releases to the public. Our...

This paper provides new insights into the productivity of teams and the relationship between the inspector and the inspected party by examining data on inspections of offshore oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. We exploit weather patterns that only influence the number of inspectors...

Over the past several years, labeling schemes that focus on a wide range of environmental and social metrics have proliferated. Although little empirical evidence has been generated with respect to carbon footprint labels, much can be learned from our experience with similar product labels. We...

We propose and test a new survey methodology to assess the public's criminal justice spending priorities. Respondents are explicitly forced to trade-off one type of crime prevention or control policy for another and to consider the fact that any money spent on crime prevention or control...