Probability Of Punishment Research Articles

Arrests and convictions but not sentence length deter terrorism in 28 European Union member states.

While countries differ in how they handle terrorism, criminal justice systems in Europe and elsewhere treat terrorism similar to other crime, with police, prosecutors, judges, courts and penal systems carrying out similar functions of investigations, apprehension, charging, convicting and overseeing punishments, respectively. We address a dearth of research on potential deterrent effects against terrorism by analysing data on terrorism offending, arrests, charges, convictions and sentencing over 16 years in 28 European Union member states. Applying both count and dynamic panel data models across multiple specifications, we find that increased probability of apprehension and punishment demonstrate an inverse relationship with terrorism offending, while the rate of charged individuals is associated with a small increase in terrorism. The results for sentence length are less clear but also indicate potential backlash effects. These findings unveil overlaps between crime and terrorism in terms of deterrent effects and have implications for both the research agenda and policy discussion.

Impaired Punishment Learning in Conduct Disorder

Conduct disorder (CD) has been associated with deficits in the use of punishment to guide reinforcement learning (RL) and decision making. This may explain the poorly planned and often impulsive antisocial and aggressive behavior in affected youths. Here, we used a computational modeling approach to examine differences in RL abilities between CD youths and typically developing controls (TDCs). Specifically, we tested 2 competing hypotheses that RL deficits in CD reflect either reward dominance (also known as reward hypersensitivity) or punishment insensitivity (also known as punishment hyposensitivity). The study included 92 CD youths and 130 TDCs (aged 9-18 years, 48% girls) who completed a probabilistic RL task with reward, punishment, and neutral contingencies. Using computational modeling, we investigated the extent to which the 2 groups differed in their learning abilities to obtain reward and/or to avoid punishment. RL model comparisons showed that a model with separate learning rates per contingency explained behavioral performance best. Importantly, CD youths showed lower learning rates than TDCs specifically for punishment, whereas learning rates for reward and neutral contingencies did not differ. Moreover, callous-unemotional (CU) traits did not correlate with learning rates in CD. CD youths have a highly selective impairment in probabilistic punishment learning, regardless of their CU traits, whereas reward learning appears to be intact. In summary, our data suggest punishment insensitivity rather than reward dominance in CD. Clinically, the use of punishment-based intervention techniques to achieve effective discipline in patients with CD may be a less helpful strategy than reward-based techniques.

Political connections, environmental violations and punishment: Evidence from heavily polluting firms

Using hand-collected data on violations of environmental regulations by heavily polluting firms in China, we examine the relationship between political connections and the probability of punishment for breach of such regulations. To this end, we exploit a regulatory reform, the enactment of Rule 18, a key component of China's anti-corruption campaign, which required politically connected independent directors to resign from their positions. Using difference-in-differences specifications, we find that firms from which politically connected directors resigned due to Rule 18 experience a significant increase in both the likelihood of ever being punished for environment-related violations and the frequency of punishment. The effect of Rule 18 is more pronounced among firms located in regions with less efficient judicial systems and higher levels of corruption, as well as firms that are not state-owned. Our evidence indicates that in the absence of effective regulation, political connections can be costly to the environment as they strongly affect the enforcement of environmental regulations.

Evolution of cooperation driven by sampling punishment

Punishment is a key incentive to maintain cooperation. But it is costly, hence its effectiveness is under permanent debate. To overcome this difficulty, we here introduce a sampling punishment method and explore its consequences on public goods game and collective-risk social dilemma. In our model, just a small portion of participants are sampled and defectors are punished only if their portion exceeds a certain threshold. We show that the cooperation level can be effectively improved under low punishment threshold and small sample size when the punishment intensity is considerable. To identify the optimal conditions of sampling punishment, we monitor the punishment probability and related cost. We find that the adoption of a low punishment threshold and a small sample size under a considerable punishment intensity is the best, which always leads to a high cooperation level with a low related cost. Our observations are both valid in these two games.

Rewarding-unrewarding prediction signals under a bivalent context in the primate lateral hypothalamus

Animals can expect rewards under equivocal situations. The lateral hypothalamus (LH) is thought to process motivational information by producing valence signals of reward and punishment. Despite rich studies using rodents and non-human primates, these signals have been assessed separately in appetitive and aversive contexts; therefore, it remains unclear what information the LH encodes in equivocal situations. To address this issue, macaque monkeys were conditioned under a bivalent context in which reward and punishment were probabilistically delivered, in addition to appetitive and aversive contexts. The monkeys increased approaching behavior similarly in the bivalent and appetitive contexts as the reward probability increased. They increased avoiding behavior under the bivalent and aversive contexts as the punishment probability increased, but the mean frequency was lower under the bivalent context than under the aversive context. The population activity correlated with these mean behaviors. Moreover, the LH produced fine prediction signals of reward expectation, uncertainty, and predictability consistently in the bivalent and appetitive contexts by recruiting context-independent and context-dependent subpopulations of neurons, while it less produced punishment signals in the aversive and bivalent contexts. Further, neural ensembles encoded context information and “rewarding-unrewarding” and “reward-punishment” valence. These signals may motivate individuals robustly in equivocal environments.

Reputation-based probabilistic punishment on the evolution of cooperation in the spatial public goods game

Low-reputation defectors are more likely to be punished than defectors with high reputations. Motivated by this reality, this paper proposes a new mechanism, the reputation-based probabilistic punishment, into the spatial public goods game model. In this mechanism, players with time-dependent reputations are divided into two types, good players with reputations higher than the reputation threshold and bad players with reputations lower than the threshold. A defector considered a good player is less likely to be punished than a defector considered a bad player. Based on these assumptions, we systematically explore how this mechanism influences the evolution of cooperation. Through extensive simulations, we verify that a higher value of the reputation threshold is more conducive to promoting and maintaining cooperation. Moreover, increasing the cost of being punished could effectively encourage players to take cooperative behaviors. Simulation results show that both increasing the punishment intensity and increasing the punishment fine could increase the cost of being punished and are beneficial to the promotion of cooperation. Additionally, in the structured population, the distributions of strategies, reputation, and payoff in the evolutionary stable state are mainly present in the form of clusters.

Learning of probabilistic punishment as a model of anxiety produces changes in action but not punisher encoding in the dmPFC and VTA.

Previously, we developed a novel model for anxiety during motivated behavior by training rats to perform a task where actions executed to obtain a reward were probabilistically punished and observed that after learning, neuronal activity in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) represent the relationship between action and punishment risk (Park and Moghaddam, 2017). Here, we used male and female rats to expand on the previous work by focusing on neural changes in the dmPFC and VTA that were associated with the learning of probabilistic punishment, and anxiolytic treatment with diazepam after learning. We find that adaptive neural responses of dmPFC and VTA during the learning of anxiogenic contingencies are independent from the punisher experience and occur primarily during the peri-action and reward period. Our results also identify peri-action ramping of VTA neural calcium activity, and VTA-dmPFC correlated activity, as potential markers for the anxiolytic properties of diazepam.

Stay or flee? Hit-and-run accidents, darkness and probability of punishment

Empirical studies on the economic theory of crime have extensively analyzed the importance of the probability of punishment with regard to premeditated criminal activities. Unplanned crimes also occur, however, and this paper will focus on a very serious and widespread example: the hit-and-run road accident. Using police records for every road accident with injuries or mortalities that took place in Italy in the period 1996–2016, we rely on changes in daylight, both when switching between daylight saving time and winter time and across seasons, as an exogenous source of variation affecting the probability of apprehension and find that the likelihood of hit-and-run conditional on an accident taking place increases by around 20% with darkness. Our results suggest that policies increasing the likelihood of apprehension could be effective in reducing hit-and-run.

Acute food deprivation-induced relapse to heroin seeking after short and long punishment-imposed abstinence in male rats.

Stress is a major trigger for drug relapse in humans and animal models, even after prolonged abstinence. However, animal models for stress-induced relapse were criticized for the lack of predictive and face validity. Here we investigated the effect of acute food deprivation stress in a novel stress-induced relapse model using voluntary, punishment-imposed abstinence from heroin. We also performed a detailed characterization of the development of punishment-imposed abstinence. Male rats were trained to self-administered heroin (0.1mg/kg/infusion) for 2weeks, using the seeking-taking chained schedule. Pressing the 'seeking' lever led to the insertion of the 'taking' lever and pressing the take lever resulted in heroin infusion. Following self-administration training, rats were exposed to 8 or 21days of heroin-seeking punishment. During punishment, 30% of the completed seek links resulted in a mild escalating footshock instead of take lever presentation. Next, rats were tested for heroin seeking under extinction conditions after 24h of food deprivation and sated conditions. Probabilistic punishment of seeking lever responses resulted in gradual suppression of heroin seeking and taking. Exposure to food-deprivation stress induced a robust relapse to heroin seeking after short and long punishment-imposed abstinence periods, without significant effects of time, i.e., no incubation of heroin seeking. Individual differences were observed in the development of punishment-induced abstinence and stress-induced relapse. These results suggest that stress is a reliable trigger to relapse even after a prolonged period of punishment-induced, voluntary abstinence.

The probabilistic pool punishment proportional to the difference of payoff outperforms previous pool and peer punishment

The public goods game is a multiplayer version of the prisoner’s dilemma game. In the public goods game, punishment on defectors is necessary to encourage cooperation. There are two types of punishment: peer punishment and pool punishment. Comparing pool punishment with peer punishment, pool punishment is disadvantageous in comparison with peer punishment because pool punishment incurs fixed costs especially if second-order free riders (those who invest in public goods but do not punish defectors) are not punished. In order to eliminate such a flaw of pool punishment, this study proposes the probabilistic pool punishment proportional to the difference of payoff. In the proposed pool punishment, each punisher pays the cost to the punishment pool with the probability proportional to the difference of payoff between his/her payoff and the average payoff of his/her opponents. Comparing the proposed pool punishment with previous pool and peer punishment, in pool punishment of previous studies, cooperators who do not punish defectors become dominant instead of pool punishers with fixed costs. However, in the proposed pool punishment, more punishers and less cooperators coexist, and such state is more robust against the invasion of defectors due to mutation than those of previous pool and peer punishment. The average payoff is also comparable to peer punishment of previous studies.

The role of experience in deterring crime: A theory of specific versus general deterrence

AbstractThis paper examines the role of experience in determining the deterrent effect of criminal punishment. Economic models of crime typically assume potential offenders know the probability of apprehension. Thus, neither the individual's personal experience of being caught and punished nor the observation of someone else's punishment experience affects that individual's future behavior. This paper incorporates a role for experience in determining criminal activity, distinguishing between (1) how individuals form perceptions of the probability of punishment, including how those perceptions are influenced by what they experience or observe, and (2) how those perceptions, once formed, influence their decisions about criminal activity.

Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Perils of Impunity

“Ending impunity” is often heralded as the key mechanism for stopping rape in war. Yet, little systematic evidence or analyses exist of the relationship between impunity (or lack thereof) and sexual violence. We argue that amnesties signal impunity and permissiveness for sexual violence, which can perpetuate and instigate more sexual violence by rebels. Trials, on the other hand, signal a nonzero probability of punishment, which could have a deterrent effect. Studying all intrastate armed conflicts in the period 1989–2011, we find in line with the impunity signal that amnesties are associated with sexual violence by rebels, but we are not able to demonstrate a deterrent effect of trials. While the study prevents us from conclusively saying that ending impunity would be an effective policy tool to stop sexual violence in war, the association between amnesties and subsequent sexual violence is a testament to the perils of impunity.

Reputational versus Beckerian Sanctions

Abstract Legal sanctions cause reputational losses in addition to the direct losses. Lowering the probability of punishment reduces these reputational losses by diluting the informational value of verdicts. These considerations better align the positive as well as normative implications of law enforcement models with intuition and empirics: violations of the law are more responsive to the certainty rather than the severity of punishment even absent risk-seeking offenders (positive), which causes extreme Beckerian punishments to be inefficient when sanctions are socially costly to impose (normative). Moreover, in some cases optimal enforcement is “anti-Beckerian”: punishment is symbolic, and detection costs are incurred solely to provide reputational incentives.

Experimental test of the effects of punishment probability and size on the decision to take a bribe

Punishment is one of the main methods for preventing corruption. However, studies on the effect of size and probability of punishment on bribe-taking have not yielded conclusive results, possibly because studies often abstract from internal costs of wrongdoing. We introduce a punishment by a fine or termination of the task, both with varying probabilities, in a laboratory task modeling the decision to take a bribe. The punishment decreased the probability of taking higher bribes, even though the probability of taking lower bribes was unaffected. Participants took fewer bribes when the fine was larger and more probable. We did not observe any clear negative effects of small punishment crowding out intrinsic motivation to behave honestly. However, we found that the effects of punishment differ based on emotionality and honesty-humility of participants. The study shows that the prospect of punishment may deter dishonest behavior; however, personality characteristics should be taken into account when devising an effective deterrence policy.

Police and judicial efficiency in Colombia


 
 
 According to socioeconomic theories of criminal behavior, crime rates can be reduced by increasing the probability and severity of punishment. In this line, the public force and the judicial sector play an important role depending on their performance. This document analyzes this performance for each department of Colombia in 2018. Using the technique of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), the study found that police and judicial efficiency must be balanced, since in most cases, if a department has an acceptable police efficiency, it has a bad judicial efficiency performance or vice versa. At large, police efficiency had better performance than judicial efficiency in Colombia.
 
 

Alcohol Seeking Under Risk of Punishment Is Associated With Activation of Cortical and Subcortical Brain Regions.

In humans, stimuli associated with alcohol availability can provoke relapse during abstinence. In this study, we investigated the role of discriminative stimuli (DS) in the control of alcohol seeking in two types of behavioral tests. The first test examined the ability of an alcohol-associated DS to promote alcohol seeking (relapse) after punishment-imposed abstinence in the presence of a different DS. Following this, we tested whether the differentially associated DS can promote and suppress alcohol self-administration in a within-session discrimination task. During the within-session discrimination task, we also tested the rate of alcohol self-administration when two DS are presented in a compound. We first trained Long-Evans male rats (n = 24) to self-administer alcohol in the presence of one DS (reward-associated discriminative stimulus, rewDS) and then punished that behavior in the presence of a different DS (punishment-associated discriminative stimulus, punDS). On the test, we found that rats tested with the rewDS showed higher alcohol seeking than rats tested with the punDS. This result shows that a single Cue DS can promote alcohol seeking in a manner comparable to contexts. Subsequently, we trained 16 of these rats in a within-session trial-based discrimination task, comprised of intervening 2-min trials of rewDS, punDS, or conflict with rewDS and punDS in compound and a reduced probability of punishment. We found that alcohol self-administration is bi-directionally regulated by the rewDS and punDS. In conflict trials, alcohol self-administration was at a rate that was intermediate between the rewDS and punDS trials. In a final test, rats were presented with one of the three trial conditions and perfused for Fos immunohistochemistry. We found Fos expression was higher in the rats tested in the conflict condition in three interconnected sub-cortical brain regions. This study demonstrated the important role that alcohol-associated DS plays an important role in promoting relapse to alcohol seeking after punishment-imposed abstinence. We also implemented a within-session discrimination task that allows for the study of alcohol seeking under motivational conflict, which may be relevant for alcohol use despite negative consequences. The results from the Fos data suggest that higher alcohol seeking in approach-avoidance motivational conflict is associated with activation of sub-cortical regions but not cortical regions.

Abortions in the Under-Russian Ukraine in the 19th – early 20th centuries: modernization vs. traditional culture

The article considers the attitude of the society of the Under-Russian Ukraine of the 19th – early 20th centuries to abortion through the prism of confronting the values of traditional culture with its condemnation of abortion as a sin of infanticide, and new urbanization trends that justified abortion. The growth in the number of abortions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which was a natural consequence of the deformation of the family institution against the background of modernization processes, has been demonstrated. The reasons that pushed women to have an abortion have been analysed. If among rural girls the main reason was the fear of being punished by the community for premarital sex or adultery, becoming an outcast (single mother), etc., among urban residents the material factor dominated (inability to feed a large number of children). At the same time, it was determined why abortions were low popularity among peasant women (strong positions of the Christian doctrine of infanticide, high probability of death during the operation, the dominance of the cult of the mother). Methods of abortion (mechanical and chemical) are given. The criminal liability of women and midwives for miscarriage is shown. The author provides significant statistics on the number of people convicted of criminal abortion not only in the Russian Empire, but also in the world, as well as examples of public struggle for the decriminalization of abortion. Legislation of the Russian Empire in the early twentieth century demonstrates a much more loyal attitude towards women who have resorted to abortion, given the new realities and challenges of the time. The probability of punishment for abortion was low, because, on the one hand, most miscarriages were made voluntarily, and therefore cases were rarely sent to court, except in the case of a woman’s death during surgery, and on the other hand – jurors often acquitted abortions. women and midwives.

Appeasing yourself or others? – The use of self-punishment and compensation and how it influences punishment

This paper analyzes experimental data to better understand self-punishment and compensation as potential means for making amends for having caused distributional harm and inefficiency. Our design allows for and disentangles intended harm and unintended harm. In our data, subjects infrequently self-punish, whereas they frequently offer compensation. Appeasement tactics are used particularly when the harmed party can punish the harm doer. Compensation is an informative signal for the harm doer’s benign intent, which does not similarly apply to self-punishment. Both self-punishment and compensation lower the punishment level imposed by the harmed party on the harm doer, whereas results regarding the probability of punishment are less clear.

The Social Honesty game - A computational analysis of the impact of conformity and identity on honest behavior contagion in complex social systems

Abstract We consider a probabilistic-payoff social dilemma game and we analyze the impact of various social learning mechanisms - conformity, diversity generators, identity, on the dynamics of honest behavior in a virtual population. To capture the inherent variability and uncertainty of a complex social environment, the proposed model considers probabilistic payoffs as well as a variety of strategy updating rules and hybrid neighborhood topologies. The implicit underlying mechanisms are those of imitation and social influence. By simulating evolutionary spatial scenarios, we identify factors that favor contagion of honest behavior (i.e. social honesty) in the context of probabilistic payoff. Conformity and identity have a significant effect on the contagion of honest behavior. They slow down the dynamics, make it more stable, and help the formation and growth of clusters, favoring the emergence and spreading of honest behavior. However, their impact is topology dependent, nonlinear, exhibiting phase shifts. High conformity favors honest behavior in simple topologies, and does the opposite in complex topologies. Without a certain degree of diversity (use of alternative strategies) the system loses its adaptation capability. At the other end, strategy inconsistency leads to chaos, which favors the contagion of dishonest behavior. A structuring effect of leaders on chaotic behavior is also observed: their presence reduces the effects of random behavior, inducing alignment and reducing the necessity of a higher punishment probability. The key findings of this research can help predict trends and design public and organizational policies to nudge honest behavior, in the context of high complexity dynamics generated by the recent advances in information technology.

The economic approach to designing anticorruption institutions

Contemporary economic analysis of corrupt behaviour requires practical consideration of the issues concerning projecting of social anti-corruption institutions. The economic science has accumulated sufficient practical experience of institutional construction in society, for instance approaches provided by K. Sunstein’s and E. Ostrom. The requirement of reasonability in managing economic interactions makes the society refuse from the dichotomy of market (anarchical, spontaneous) and non-market (hierarchical) institutions. The same tendency can be observed in arranging anti-corruption struggle in state management. Both approaches - aimed at creating fixed vertical hierarchy as well as at creating competition at the lowest bureaucratic level - are inappropriate. That is why anticorruption institutions arranging should be based on economic models of rational criminal and citizens involvement in law enforcement activity. These models enable to harmonize state dirigisme related to the state management ex ante with basic provision of laissez-faire doctrine – personal motives of people’s behaviour. Standard economic supply and demand model has shown inelasticity of corruption crimes supply in Russia. Non-price determinants (cultural norms, “tabu”) seem to be more significant in motivating corruption behaviour than price determinants (seriousness and probability of punishment). Economic characteristics of elasticity and inelasticity of supply and demand in the model of involvement into law enforcement activity enable to create strategy of developing social anti-corruption institutions.