IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-00391095.html

Punishment should fit the crime: An assessment of the French reform of minimum mandatory penalties

Author

Listed:
  • Bruno Deffains

    (BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Roberto Gabialti

    (EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Sébastien Rouillon

    (GREThA - Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

We study the effects of minimum mandatory sentences when judges are at least minimally averse to error and/or follow some "penalty should fit the crime" heuristic. We apply our analysis to the 2007 reform of the French Penal Code. We show that the introduction of minimum mandatory sentences in this context may backfire inducing more crime in the long run. Judges may prefer to acquit a criminal than convicting him to a sentence reputed too high.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruno Deffains & Roberto Gabialti & Sébastien Rouillon, 2009. "Punishment should fit the crime: An assessment of the French reform of minimum mandatory penalties," Post-Print hal-00391095, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00391095
    DOI: 10.1007/s10258-009-0050-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    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:hal:journl:hal-00391095. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.