{"title":"“大到不能入狱”的理论","authors":"Iwan Bos","doi":"10.1515/rle-2021-0061","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"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’.","PeriodicalId":44795,"journal":{"name":"Review of Law & Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"A Theory of ‘Too Big To Jail’\",\"authors\":\"Iwan Bos\",\"doi\":\"10.1515/rle-2021-0061\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"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’.\",\"PeriodicalId\":44795,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Review of Law & Economics\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.4000,\"publicationDate\":\"2021-11-01\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Review of Law & Economics\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1515/rle-2021-0061\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q3\",\"JCRName\":\"LAW\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Review of Law & Economics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/rle-2021-0061","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
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’.