Rational Criminal Addictions

Abstract

This article argues that repeated criminal misconduct, at least in some areas, has the characteristics of a habit or addiction. Curiosity or a transient attraction can lead an offender to commit her first crime. This first infraction will give her a sense of how much she enjoyed it, and whether she has the talent, and stomach, to continue down a path of repeated misconduct. If the feedback is sufficiently positive, the offender may commit a second crime, and possibly a third. At some point, the offender will find herself with the opportunity to commit yet another crime, and realize that the immediate disutility of stopping, of going back into a life as a law-abiding citizen, is too great: she may find that the immediate disutility of foregoing a criminal opportunity is too high. Once the habit takes hold, the offender may continue to commit crimes, even if doing so leads her to suffer large aggregate negative internalities. An offender is thus “addicted to criminal misconduct” if her previous history of misconduct increases the marginal utility of committing a crime in the current period by a sufficient amount; that is, if the immediate disutility from stopping has reached a cut-off point, such that she violates the law notwithstanding the fact that but-for the addiction she would have obeyed the law. The addicted criminal trades off the heightened immediate disutility from obeying the law against the reduction in total utility due to the negative internalities—including expected sanctions. After setting forth the rational criminal addiction theory, the article develops a number of legal implications that follow from the theory.