@techreport{7076e80c790a46b080f3b03d667a20fa,
title = "A Theory of “Too Big To Jail”",
abstract = "Motivated by some recent examples, this paper employs a model of public law enforcement to explain why it may not be in society{\textquoteright}s interest to send criminals to prison. We establish two main findings. First, independent of the lawbreaker{\textquoteright}s societal position, imprisonment is suboptimal when the harm from the illegal activity is sufficiently small. Second, for a given level of harm, imprisonment is suboptimal when the lawbreaker is sufficiently important. This latter result thus provides a rationale for why some parties are taken to be “too big to jail”.",
keywords = "Class Justice, Nonmonetary Sanctions, Optimal Law Enforcement, Too Big To Jail",
author = "Iwan Bos",
year = "2021",
month = apr,
day = "30",
doi = "10.26481/umagsb.2021007",
language = "English",
series = "GSBE Research Memoranda",
publisher = "Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics",
number = "007",
address = "Netherlands",
type = "WorkingPaper",
institution = "Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics",
}