Crime Pays Research Articles

R v Andrewes: judgment day for CV fraudsters? Case commentary on the Supreme Court decision reported at [2022] UKSC 24

Crime pays. Therefore, it is paramount that offenders are not permitted to retain the illicit profits derived from their course of offending. That is the purpose of the criminal law confiscation regime, which applies to a plethora of different offences where the State confiscates the ill-gotten gains the offender has retained after sentencing. This commentary focuses on one of these offences, the colloquially named ‘CV fraud’. A relatively novel phenomenon in English law, CV fraud has come to the fore as a result of R v Andrewes, a recent Supreme Court decision. This commentary assesses this decision and ultimately concludes that while the Supreme Court’s approach is sound in principle, it does not provide a solution which encompasses the broader spectrum of cases falling within the category of CV fraud. The Andrewes approach to the calculation of ‘criminal benefit’ may therefore require considerable adaptation in future cases. Perhaps most importantly, the absence of discussion on causation leaves this corner of the confiscation regime a grey area. This paper sets out to offer a principled solution which might resolve this issue.

How to Deter Financial Misconduct if Crime Pays?

Financial misconduct has come into the spotlight in recent years, causing market regulators to increase the reach and severity of interventions. We show that at times the economic benefits of illicit financial activity outweigh the costs of litigation. We illustrate our argument with data from the US Securities and Exchanges Commission and a case of investment misconduct. From the neoclassical economic paradigm, which follows utilitarian thinking, it is rational to engage in misconduct. Still, the majority of professionals refrain from misconduct, foregoing economic rewards. We suggest financial activity could be reimagined taking into account intrinsic and prosocial motivations. A virtue ethics framework could also be applied, linking financial behavior to the quest for moral excellence and shared flourishing. By going beyond utilitarian thinking and considering alternative models, we offer a fuller account of financial behavior and a better perspective from which to design deterrence methods.

Effective Models and Numerical Homogenization for Wave Propagation in Heterogeneous Media on Arbitrary Timescales

A family of effective equations for wave propagation in periodic media for arbitrary timescales mathcal {O}(varepsilon ^{-alpha }), where varepsilon ll 1 is the period of the tensor describing the medium, is proposed. The well-posedness of the effective equations of the family is ensured without requiring a regularization process as in previous models (Benoit and Gloria in Long-time homogenization and asymptotic ballistic transport of classical waves, 2017, arXiv:1701.08600; Allaire et al. in Crime pays; homogenized wave equations for long times, 2018, arXiv:1803.09455). The effective solutions in the family are proved to be varepsilon close to the original wave in a norm equivalent to the {mathrm {L}^{infty }}(0,varepsilon ^{-alpha }T;{{mathrm {L}^{2}}(varOmega )}) norm. In addition, a numerical procedure for the computation of the effective tensors of arbitrary order is provided. In particular, we present a new relation between the correctors of arbitrary order, which allows to substantially reduce the computational cost of the effective tensors of arbitrary order. This relation is not limited to the effective equations presented in this paper and can be used to compute the effective tensors of alternative effective models.

Crime, Politics, and the Future of India's Democracy

Abstract The review essays by Sunila S. Kale, Sandipto Dasgupta, and Michael J. Watts on Milan Vaishnav's When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics and Steven Pierce's Moral Economies of Corruption: State Formation and Political Culture in Nigeria raise a number of theoretically interesting questions about corruption, criminality, and their historical embeddedness. In particular, they force a rethinking of the commonly accepted notion that in many contexts the state, far from being seen as the remedy to citizens' core grievances, is the very source of the grievance to begin with. Paradoxically, elected representatives who helm the state apparatus are often the only actors with the authority and delegated powers to reform the state, something that they have few incentives to do.

The Criminal and the Corrupt

Abstract The commentaries in this Kitabkhana on Milan Vaishnav's When Crime Pays and Steven Pierce's Moral Economies of Corruption provide ample food for thought about the social-scientific study of crime and corruption. All agree on the importance of focusing on actual practice and not forcing non-Western societies into Eurocentric heuristics. They also pose urgent questions about what might constitute grounded theories of governance and productive avenues for pushing for reform and change.

Crime, Corruption, and Political Order in Nigeria and India

Abstract The subjects of crime and corruption remain perennially important for social scientists concerned with the nature of power, authority, and order. Steven Pierce's Moral Economies of Corruption: State Formation and Political Culture in Nigeria and Milan Vaishnav's When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics present two very different approaches to the study of crime and corruption, both rich, complex, and lucidly conveyed. As a scholar of South Asia, Kale's approach in the essay is to use insights from Pierce to reflect on the methodological and theoretical choices in Vaishnav's account of India's criminal politicians. In discussing each author's contributions, rather than providing a comprehensive account, Kale focuses on the parts of their arguments that are useful for comparative discussion.

The Power of Corruption

Abstract The central paradox of corruption in the political life of the global South is how such a widely despised phenomenon persists so untroubled by allthe negative attention. The two books under discussion—Steven Pierce's Moral Economies of Corruption and Milan Vaishnav's When Crime Pays—demonstrate that to make sense of that paradox, one needs to go beyond the dominant legal/technocratic understanding of corruption as either private acts of illegality or failures of the civic democratic process. Thinking further with the insights offered by those books, the article sugg ests that the phenomenon of corruption can only be made sense of when placed within the matrix of political and social power relations in the global South democracies. Corruptions appear not as distortions in an idealized democratic marketplace, but in the context of maneuvers of counter-democratic power to maintain existing hierarchies of dominations against tides of democratic mobilization, not merely as a subversion of the public good, but in reaction to attempts to make goods public.

Baby’s First Bank Heist by Jim Whalley

Reviewed by: Baby’s First Bank Heist by Jim Whalley Elizabeth Bush Whalley, Jim Baby’s First Bank Heist; illus. by Stephen Collins. Bloomsbury, 2019 [32p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-5476-0062-5 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-5476-0063-2 $12.59 Reviewed from galleys R 4-7 yrs What made Baby Frank go wrong? Did his convict-striped onesie presage a bad end for a bad seed? Or did his parents’ callous refusal to buy him a pet drive him [End Page 227] to desperation? Viewers can judge for themselves as Baby Frank’s dark and hilarious rhyming story unfolds, from planning how to score enough cash for a pet and its requisite upkeep, to the titular bank heist itself (“Past every camera, gate, and guard,/ the baby crawled unseen./ There were no bars or laser beams/he couldn’t fit between”), to the gross parental negligence that led to Frank’s further felonious acquisitions, to restitution and Baby Frank’s happily ever after “behind bars.” Huh? Yes, when the true extent of Frank’s malfeasance is exposed, the bank wants its money back, and the only way to cover the losses is to open the overrun home as a zoo—which makes Frank the happiest criminal baby alive. Collins’ pictures in this British import are a smooth jazzy tribute to mid-century chic, and there’s a big payday for kids who scan the background details carefully: Baby Frank in a onesie bulging with stolen bills, Baby Frank on the TV evening news, Baby Frank’s duplex neighbor glowering at the ticket line forming just across his fence. Opportunistic youngsters may see the lesson as crime pays, but most viewers will simply delight in Baby Frank’s antics. Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Crime, Poverty, the Vernacular Press, and Political Participation in Democratic India - Politics and State-Society Relations in India. By James Manor. London: Hurst & Company, 2017. xviii, 366 pp. ISBN: 9781849047180 (cloth). - Political Communication and Mobilisation: The Hindi Media in India. By Taberez Ahmed Neyazi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xv, 234 pp. ISBN: 9781108416139 (cloth). - Politics of

Crime, Poverty, the Vernacular Press, and Political Participation in Democratic India - Politics and State-Society Relations in India. By James Manor. London: Hurst & Company, 2017. xviii, 366 pp. ISBN: 9781849047180 (cloth). - Political Communication and Mobilisation: The Hindi Media in India. By Taberez Ahmed Neyazi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xv, 234 pp. ISBN: 9781108416139 (cloth). - Politics of

When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics. By Milan Vaishnav. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. 440p. $40.00 cloth.

When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics. By Milan Vaishnav. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. 440p. $40.00 cloth.

Book review: Milan Vaishnav, When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics

Milan Vaishnav, When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics. New Delhi: Harper Collins. 2016. 410 pages. ₹799.

Crime Pays: Terrorist Group Engagement in Crime and Survival

ABSTRACT What impact does engagement in crime have on terrorist group survival? In theory criminal activity may decrease group survival by damaging group legitimacy or prompting government crackdowns. Conversely, crime might boost group survival by facilitating access to revenues or by further taxing state policing capacity. Moreover, different types of crime might have different effects. We investigate the impact of crime on terrorist group survival using cross-sectional data on 578 terrorist groups observed between 1970 and 2007. We find that engagement in crime reduces a group’s chance of demise by around 50% and extends its lifespan by around 7 years on average. Terrorist groups involved in narcotics are less likely to end by police or military force, but are also less likely to win political concessions. We find that groups involved in extortion live the longest and are also less likely to end by force or by splintering.

Cartels As Rational Business Strategy: New Data Demonstrates that Crime Pays

This article is the first to analyze whether cartel sanctions are optimal. The conventional wisdom is that the current level of sanctions is adequate or excessive. The article demonstrates, however, that the combined level of current United States cartel sanctions is only 9% to 21% as large as it should be to protect potential victims of cartelization optimally. Consequently, the average level of United States anti-cartel sanctions should be approximately quintupled. The United States imposes a diverse arsenal of sanctions against collusion: criminal fines and restitution payments for the firms involved and prison, house arrest and fines for the corporate officials involved. Both direct and indirect victims can sue for mandatory treble damages and attorney's fees. This multiplicity of sanctions has helped give rise to the strongly held - but until now never seriously examined - conventional wisdom in the antitrust field that these sanctions are not just adequate to deter collusion, but that they are excessive. We analyze this issue using the standard optimal deterrence approach. This model is predicated upon the belief that corporations and individuals contemplating illegal collusion will be deterred only if expected rewards are less than expected costs, adjusted by the probability the illegal activity will be detected and sanctioned. To undertake this analysis we first calculate the expected rewards from cartelization using a new and unique database containing 75 cartel cases. We survey the literature to ascertain the probability cartels are detected and the probability detected cartels are sanctioned. We calculate the size of the sanctions involved for each case in our sample. These include corporate fines, individual fines, payouts in private damage actions, and the equivalent value (or disvalue) of imprisonment or house arrest for the individuals convicted. Our analysis shows that, overall, United States' cartel sanctions are only 9% to 21% as large as they should be to protect potential victims of cartelization optimally. This means that, despite the existing sanctions, collusion remains a rational business strategy. Cartelization is a crime that on average pays. In fact, it pays very well. Accordingly, our concluding section suggests specific ways cartel sanctions should be increased to become more nearly optimal. This should save consumers many billions of dollars each year.

Does Crime Pay? The Effect of Off-Field Behavior on Player Salaries In the National Football League

Mixed evidence exists on the relationship between arrest and labor market outcomes such as employment and earnings. We analyze the effect of arrest on earnings in a sample of National Football League players who were arrested between 2000 and 2009. We use propensity score matching to construct a comparison sample of players who were not arrested over the same period. Regression results suggest that players who were arrested earned about 10% to 14% more than similar players who were not arrested. Relatively lower risk aversion and aggressive tendencies may explain this difference in compensation.

Does Crime Pay? Asset Pricing with Revealed Utility of Heterogeneous Consumers

I propose violent crime growth as a measure of revealed marginal utility growth of heterogeneous consumers in incomplete markets. Consumer heterogeneity is measured using the cross-sectional average and cross-sectional variance of crime growth exploiting a monthly panel of reported crime incidents from over 10,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States from 1975-2012. Consistent with heterogeneous consumer models such as Mankiw (1986), I find that the cross-sectional average and variance of violent crime growth can explain the cross-section of stock returns. Specifically, investors pay a premium for assets that have higher betas to the violent crime growth moments.

Does Crime Pay? Issue Ownership, Political Opportunity, and the Populist Right in Western Europe

This article contributes to the vast literature concerning extreme right parties in Western Europe by examining the effects of crime on the electoral success of these parties. Utilizing theories of issue ownership and political opportunity, this article argues that populist right parties appeal to voters who feel a sense of physical and social insecurity because of higher levels of crime. This hypothesis is tested using a data set covering 18 Western European countries between 1970 and 2005. The results indicate that populist right parties benefit from higher levels of crime as well as linking crime with higher levels of immigration. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of this analysis.

When Crime Pays: Measuring Judicial Efficacy Against Corruption in Brazil

There is a widespread perception in Brazil that civil servants caught in corrupt practices are not punished. Yet, until now, there was no hard evidence that would support such claim and some argued that this was just a mislead perception due to the recent increase in anti-corruption measures. One of the main reasons for this notably absence is that it is very difficult to identify actual cases of corruption to, then, measure whether or not they are actually punished by the judicial system. This paper proposes a method of measuring judicial system efficacy against corruption by comparing proven corruption cases punished by administrative committees with criminal and civil judicial performance for the same cases. Ours results show that in fact the Brazilian judicial system is highly ineffective in fighting corruption.

Should Crime Pay: A Critical Assessment of the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996

The victims' rights movement significantly altered the role of the victim in the criminal justice system.1 Beginning in the 1970s, the movement reflected public sentiment that the criminal justice system had become overly offender focused and sought make the justice system more sensitive to victims' needs and concerns.2 At the apex of the campaign, President Reagan commissioned a Task Force on Victims of Crime, which conducted a national study of the plight of crime victims and made a series of policy recommenda tions to improve their situation.3 A central component of the reforms suggested by both the President's Task Force and the victims' rights movement was the right of victims to receive restitution from the perpetrator of the crime.4 Heeding that advice, Congress enacted legislation over the last twenty-five years that significantly enhanced the authority of federal courts to order restitution to victims of crime.5

Criminal Law and Economics: Some Topics Related to the Cost of Inprisonment, Deterrence and to the Question if Crime Pays

The relationships between criminal law and economics are surely of great importance, as the matters related to crime, punishment, reeducation of the prisoners and so on have a great impact on the society. In other words, the crime and its consequences have heavy social costs, both for private citizens and companies, victims of the acts punished by criminal law, and for the State, that has to bear the cost of building and maintaining the prisons, creating some programs of reeducation of the prisoners, keeping a (more or less) efficient system of police and justice. The aim of this paper is to debate some main topics related to criminal law and economics, with a special attention to the deterrence (starting from the analysis of the number of people in jail and the costs related to it and to public safety in some countries). With regard to deterrence, we will give some possible answers and solution to the question if it is worth to have a criminal law system that tends to be very efficient and whose aim is in practice, and not only in theory, to punish as many criminals as possible.

Does Crime Pay? A Classroom Demonstration of Monitoring and Enforcement

This paper presents a classroom game in which students choose whether or not to comply with pollution regulations. By changing the level of monitoring and fines for noncompliance across periods, the game shows students how the probability and severity of enforcement affects incentives for compliance. The game can be adapted for settings other than environmental regulation and can be used in a variety of classes including regulation, law and economics, environmental economics, public economics, or the economics of crime. It can easily be conducted in a fifty-minute class period.