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Corrupt police

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  • Abbink, Klaus
  • Ryvkin, Dmitry
  • Serra, Danila

Abstract

We employ laboratory experiments to examine the effects of corrupt law enforcement on crime. We embed corruption in a social dilemma where citizens choose whether to obey the law or to break the law and impose a negative externality on others. Police officers observe citizens' behavior and can impose fines on law-breakers or extort bribes from any citizen. We find that the presence of police, even if they are corrupt, substantially reduces crime as compared to a baseline setting without police. Corrupt police officers use bribes in a targeted manner as a substitute for fines to punish law-breakers. We also test the effectiveness of two reward mechanisms aimed at reducing police corruption, both of which are based on society-wide police performance measures and not on the monitoring of individual officers. Both mechanisms make bribery more precisely targeted toward law-breakers, and one of them leads to a moderate reduction in crime.

Suggested Citation

  • Abbink, Klaus & Ryvkin, Dmitry & Serra, Danila, 2020. "Corrupt police," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 101-119.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:123:y:2020:i:c:p:101-119
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2020.07.001
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    • Klaus Abbink & Dmitry Ryvkin & Danila Serra, 2018. "Corrupt police," Working Papers wp2018_09_01, Department of Economics, Florida State University, revised Sep 2018.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corruption; Bribery; Crime; Police; Experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior

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