Optimal Preventive Law Enforcement and Stopping Standards

Abstract

Preventive law enforcement increases social welfare by hindering the infliction of criminal harm, but produces inconvenience costs to the general public, because it requires interfering with the acts of innocents as well as attempters. The optimal amount of investment in preventive enforcement is greater than that which maximizes deterrence, but, smaller than that which minimizes criminal harm. Thus, ignoring preventive benefits and/or inconvenience costs results in an inefficient investment portfolio over enforcement methods, and in a predictable manner. Stopping standards, which determine the threshold suspicion required to trigger a stop, are tools that can be used to optimally trade-off the costs and benefits associated with preventive enforcement. The optimal stopping standard is weaker than its analogs in the trial context, namely standards of proof, which generally require preponderance of the evidence in civil trials and proof beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal trials. Finally, suspicionless stops can be optimal in a variety of circumstances, and are more likely optimal when enforcers perform poorly in forming suspicions; inconvenience costs are small; the population is unresponsive to deterrence measures; and the attempt rate is high.