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Judicial Torture as a Screening Device

Author

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  • Chen Kong-Pin

    (Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, No. 128, Academia Road, Nangang, Taipei 11529, Taiwan)

  • Tsai Tsung-Sheng

    (Department of Economics, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 10617, Taiwan)

Abstract

Judicial torture to extract information or to elicit a confession was a common practice in pre-modern societies, both in the east and the west. This paper proposes a positive theory for judicial torture. It is shown that torture reflects the magistrate’s attempt to balance type I and type II errors in the decision-making, by forcing the guilty to confess with a higher probability than the innocent, and thereby decreases the type I error at the cost of the type II error. Moreover, there is a non-monotonic relationship between the superiority of torture and the informativeness of investigation: when investigation is relatively uninformative, an improvement in technology used in the investigation actually lends an advantage to torture so that torture is even more attractive to the magistrates; however, when technological progress reaches a certain threshold, the advantage of torture is weakened, so that a judicial system based on torture becomes inferior to one based on evidence. This result can explain the historical development of the judicial system.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen Kong-Pin & Tsai Tsung-Sheng, 2015. "Judicial Torture as a Screening Device," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 15(2), pages 277-312, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejtec:v:15:y:2015:i:2:p:277-312:n:8
    DOI: 10.1515/bejte-2014-0023
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Mialon, Hugo M. & Mialon, Sue H. & Stinchcombe, Maxwell B., 2012. "Torture in counterterrorism: Agency incentives and slippery slopes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 33-41.
    2. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1985. "A Bargaining Model with Incomplete Information about Time Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(5), pages 1151-1172, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Mialon, Hugo M. & Mialon, Sue H. & Stinchcombe, Maxwell B., 2012. "Torture in counterterrorism: Agency incentives and slippery slopes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 33-41.

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