A Theory of 'Too Big To Jail'

I. Bos

doi:10.1515/rle-2021-0061

A Theory of 'Too Big To Jail'

I. Bos^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Organisation,Strategy & Entrepreneurship

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Motivated by some recent examples, this paper employs a model of public law enforcement to explain why it may not be in society’s interest to send criminals to prison. We establish two main findings. First, independent of the lawbreaker’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’.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	569-582
Number of pages	14
Journal	Review of Law & Economics
Volume	17
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1515/rle-2021-0061
Publication status	Published - 30 Dec 2021

JEL classifications

d63 - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
k42 - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

Keywords

class justice
nonmonetary sanctions
optimal law enforcement
too big to jail
FINES

Access to Document

10.1515/rle-2021-0061

Cite this

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