Review of Literature
2.3 Empirical studies on determinants of crimes using economic approach
2.3.1 Role of Deterrence factors
The issue of deterrence effects of criminal justice system in terms of law enforcement agency, judicial system and jails attains a special significance. While utilising the economists’ framework in studying the role of deterrent factors in crimes, researchers have taken various proxy variables to reflect the influence of these determinants. In estimating the effects of deterrence factors on crime rates, it has been seen that in most of the studies, law enforcement effects have been taken care of through the probability of apprehension and the severity of how an offender has been punished or police presence .Some authors have used detection rate, as the proxy for probability of apprehension while for others, conviction rate has been the relevant proxy.
The prison population or average duration of being in the prison by an offender has been noted as the proxy for severity of punishment. In short, the effects of deterrence in terms of detection, conviction and punishment are likely to have the deterrence effect through the law enforcement as seen from the studies on deterrence discussed below.
A number of empirical studies has been concentrating on the issue of prevention policies to combat crime. In this context different variables affecting the criminal behaviour have been examined, and these include both men and machines in terms of growing strength of enforcement agencies (De Oliveira, 2003), expenditures incurred for the procurement of police equipments (Imrohoroglu et al. 2000) and so on. Number of people arrested in connection with commission of crimes (Corman et al. 1987, Corman & Mocan, 2000) and the figures of conviction have been also looked into as relevant variables in studies (Pudney et al. 2000; Funk & Kugler, 2003). In study by Levitt (1996), number of criminals sentenced to imprisonment has been considered. There are conflicting conclusions in such
studies. But a broad generalisation may be made saying that the possibility of getting convicted and undergoing sentence for the offence are effective ways for prevention of crime . This is due to the reason that generally criminal actions are not always connected with arrests, and it is also a fact that arrests may not always lead to convictions and imprisonments.
Dills et al (2008) have summarised the deterrence variables in this manner:
(i) arrests per capita as a proxy for the probability of apprehension and punishment (ii) size of Police force (iii) incarceration rate (iv) capital punishment. It is assumed that all other variables are unchanged, the higher level of arrest should mean a lesser occurrence of crime.
It is expected that imposition of capital punishment instead of life imprisonment increases the expected cost of crime which in turn would reduce heinous crimes like murder. There are different results from empirical studies on the effectiveness of capital punishment as a tool of crime reduction, e.g. study by Levitt (2003) did raise questions on the deterrent effect of death penalty, he observed that the quality of prison life may have a greater impact on criminal than capital punishment by using panel data of USA for 1950-1990.
In the study by Lau and Hamzah (2012), the deterrence factors have been taken as number of cases disposed of by the High Court, and the imprisonment rate along with recidivism rate while looking at the performance by the law enforcement agencies. The analysis examines the total crimes rate and its disaggregated levels like robbery, theft etc. and found that these appear to influence the different categories of crimes.
It is worth mentioning here that a distinction is being made by researchers between deterrence effects through the probability and severity of punishment and the deterrence effects through imprisonment. The latter has been termed as incapacitation effects or preventive effect (Han, 2009). This effect isolates the offenders from the potential criminal activities through imprisonment and thus the offenders are prevented from participating in future crimes. However, this preventive effect lasts till the imprisonment continues. The deterrence effect is expected to have an effect on both actual and potential criminals. As Levitt (1995) has put it, in practice, deterrence has different implication. It may so happen that criminals are not having adequate information about the possibility of detection. They may be extremely optimistic about their criminal activities and their abilities to get away without being detected. In some cases there may be substantial gap between the benefits for
the crime committed by them and cost of crime in terms of detection on imprisonment. The study by Levitt (1996) examined this aspect of incarceration in USA which showed a high quantum of incarceration from 1970 to 1990 without much impact on crime reduction. In this study, he looked at the relationship between size of prison population, the intensity of punishment and various crime rates while controlling for other variables determining crimes.
Mathur (1978) took two time periods, 1960 and 1970, and found a negative relationship between the certainty and the severity of punishment with all types of crimes, indicating rationality of the individuals in making decision on committing crimes.
The effect of police numbers on crime has been a matter of debate. Different studies have come up with different results. This may be due to the reason that sometimes it might so happen that more crimes attract deployment of more police which would appear to show as if higher numbers of police leads to more commission of crimes. An important study by Levitt (2002) points to the negative effect of the numbers of policemen on violent as well as property crime rates. He had used panel of 122 cities for the twenty years data (1975- 1995). He found strongest evidence of negative impact for murder and robbery. Fajnzylber et al (2002) found police per lakh population and death penalty as deterrent variables for a number of countries (1970-1994).
Marvell et al (1996) had used pooled data from 49 states and 56 cities of US for the period 1973-1992 and found that police numbers and crime rates are differently related for select types of crimes. For example, they found significant negative correlation between number of police and homicide, robbery and burglary at the city level. Police employments and expenditures on police have also been used as proxy for variables to represent deterrence in crime and found to be associated with property crimes (Zsolt Becsi, 1999).
Han et al (2010) have utilised the quantum of detection of crime and percentage of population in prisons as measures of the law enforcement instruments since higher levels of detection and prison population are expected to have a negative relationship with the crime rate. The authors concluded, on average, that enhancement of detection of crime might be considered as an effective instrument in controlling property crimes, but
increased percentage in prison population may not necessarily decrease crimes against property..
In the analysis of crimes in America, under deterrence variables, police number per 100,000 residents and the judicial strength represented by number of incarcerated criminals per 100,000 residents have been considered by Oliver (2002). These two would reflect the probability of apprehension and the punishment for a criminal. Along with these deterrence variables, the author has introduced lagged crime rate variable to measure the effect of criminal inertia which means the present crime incidence being explained by its past incidence. This variable accounts for the crime rate one year prior.
Denny et al (2004)) have focused their attention on different types of crimes against property in Ireland using data for 1957-1998. The variables reflecting the status of criminal justice system in the form of custody rate and detection rate have negative associations with the level of crime. The study estimated that 1% increase in detection rates lowers the burglary crime by 3% while equal quantity of increase in numbers of custody decrease the burglary crime by 0.9%. They found that the detection rate is more effective in reduction of crime in rural areas while analysing burglary in Ireland between 1958 and 1998.
The study by Sullivan (1990) indicates that enhancement in the probability of arrest and punishment is more likely to have a stronger deterrence effect than more severe sentencing.
Similar result was obtained by Imrohoroglu et al (2004) in USA between 1980 and 1996 that increased probability of apprehension had a deterrent effect on the crime situation.
Abraham(2011) found in case of India in the Panel data analysis of crimes (2001-2008) that police pursuance shows no significant effect, while other deterrence variables like judicial efficiency, represented by the number of cases of less than a year as a share of total cases, has a deference effect on crime. Thus in India, the author opined that efficiency in justice system leads to crime deterrence, however the role of police as a deterrent is not unambiguous. In the study by Sookram et.al (2009), the authors have indicated that in Trinidad and Tobago overall crime rate is rising heavily within the last decade, and the detection rate and crime were found to be negatively related. One of the objectives behind the study by Dutta and Hussain (2009) is to look into how the policy of crime deterrence through its different parameters have impacted the crime scenario in different states of India.
They have used indicators like number of police per 1000 square kilo meter, number of IPC cases per civil policemen which reflect the load on police force in terms of detection and
crime prevention, number of arrests in IPC cases per ‘00,000 population in previous period and percentage rate of charge sheets filed. Another crime deterrence factor which relates to criminal justice system is the conviction rate in previous period reflecting the probability of getting punished for the crime committed. The speed of imposing penalty on the criminals has been sought to be represented by the data on IPC cases disposed off within 6 months. In the study crime rates are found to be positively associated with lagged arrest and conviction rates. Important conclusions relate to the presence of more police personnel and lesser work load in terms of fewer IPC case per civil policeman are seen to be correlated with lower rates of crime. High rates of charge sheeting in properly investigated cases also act as deterrence.