IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ausecp/v47y2008i1p115-128.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Socially Optimal Criminal Court Waiting Times: A Partial Investigation

Author

Listed:
  • ANDREW TORRE

Abstract

Criminal courts provide a forum for conducting prosecutions with a guilty plea or a trial. Since queues are used as the basis for rationing scarce court facilities delays are inevitable, however courts are invariably criticised as being inefficient as a consequence. This focus on court delay defined as the time elapsing between the listing of the case in the court list and its final disposition is misleading. Rather, attention should be drawn to the considerably longer period between the initiation of proceedings and the conclusion of the case. In the case of defendants not granted bail, this pre‐trial delay confers both costs and benefits on society and this observation can be used to ascertain socially optimal pre‐trial waits.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Torre, 2008. "Socially Optimal Criminal Court Waiting Times: A Partial Investigation," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 115-128, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ausecp:v:47:y:2008:i:1:p:115-128
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8454.2008.00335.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8454.2008.00335.x
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-8454.2008.00335.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ausecp:v:47:y:2008:i:1:p:115-128. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0004-900X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.