Discretionary prosecution of regulatory crimes: disproportionate emphasis and consequences to other serious crimes

Abstract

Prosecutors pay closer attention to cases related to regulatory policies that are emphasized by the political community. Discrepancy in the prosecution efforts between ‘regulatory crimes’ and ‘conventional crimes’ has widened significantly in Korea over the past 40 years. Considering both the low prosecuting preference for, and the rapid increases in, violent, property, and sexual crimes, we investigate the different spillover effects to the incidence of these serious sub-categories of conventional crimes due to the ‘disproportionate’ focus on regulatory crimes. The spillovers stem from the resource constraints and the economic incentives of enforcers and criminals. In this paper, it is found that the spillover was the greatest in sexual crimes and violent crimes, both of which are conceived to be most harmful to society. Therefore, the opportunity cost of the politically-motivated prosecuting focus has also been borne in a ‘disproportionate’ fashion. We also discover that, in pursuing the prosecuting emphasis on regulatory crimes under resource constraints, prosecutors have also discretionarily increased the use of ‘summary prosecution’ for other crimes, since it is a less expensive instrument for prosecutors.