Dieses Papier beschreibt in Grundzügen die Vorgehensweise und erste Ergebnisse einer Meta-Analyse empirischer Arbeiten zur negativen Generalpr ävention. Von vielen hundert Studien aus allen Fach- und Themengebieten wurden zufällig 200 ausgewählt und mittels einer Meta-Analyse ausgewertet....

We study the applicability of the pattern recognition methodology rough set data analysis (RSDA) in the field of meta analysis. We give a summary of the mathematical and statistical background and then proceed to an application of the theory to a meta analysis of empirical studies dealing with...

A sample of 200 studies empirically analyzing deterrence in some way is evaluated. Various methods of data mining (stepwise regressions, Extreme Bounds Analysis, Bayesian Model Averaging, manual and naive selections) are used to explore different influences of various variables on the results of...

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...

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 the death penalty save lives? A surge of recent interest in this question has yielded a series of papers purporting to show robust and precise estimates of a substantial deterrent effect of capital punishment. We assess the various approaches that have been used in this literature, testing...

For nearly 50 years academics have been studying how labor markets affect crime. The initial interesting and important theoretical and empirical work generated substantial interest in studying crime among economists, in particular, and scholars in the social sciences more broadly. This...

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...

Do criminals maximise money? Are criminals more or less selfish than the average subject? Can prisons apply measures that reduce the degree of selfishness of their inmates? Using a tried and tested tool from experimental economics, we cast new light on these old criminological questions. In a...

Under a great variety of legally relevant circumstances, people have to decide whether or not to cooperate, when they face an incentive to defect. The law sometimes provides people with sanctioning mechanisms to enforce pro-social behavior. Experimental evidence on voluntary public good...