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Title: Crime and Expected Punishment: Changes in Perceptions at the Age of Criminal Majority
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Hjalmarsson, Randi |
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Crime and Expected Punishment: Changes in Perceptions at the Age of Criminal Majority American Law and Economics Review 11,1 (Spring 2009): 209-248. Also: http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/1/209.abstract Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: Oxford University Press Keyword(s): Age and Ageing; Geocoded Data; Income; Punishment, Criminal; Self-Reporting Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. This paper assesses whether perceived punishment severity changes discontinuously when an individual becomes an adult in the eyes of the courts. I find that the perceived chance of jail increases by 5.2 percentage points at the age of criminal majority, which is over and above the general effect of aging. The magnitude of this subjective change in the chance of jail at the age of majority appears to be substantially smaller than that found in objective data. Finally, a reduced-form analysis of whether self-reported criminal behavior changes discontinuously at the age of criminal majority finds little consistent evidence of deterrence. ... The analysis in this paper is based on the sample of males in the geocoded version of the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97). An individual's perception of punishment severity is measured by the following survey question. "Suppose you were arrested for stealing a car, what is the percent chance that you would serve time in jail?" This question is asked in the first five survey rounds; during this time period, more than 80 percent of the sample reaches the age of criminal majority. |
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Bibliography Citation
Hjalmarsson, Randi. "Crime and Expected Punishment: Changes in Perceptions at the Age of Criminal Majority." American Law and Economics Review 11,1 (Spring 2009): 209-248.
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