Risk Of Sanctions Research Articles

Daring dishonesty: On the role of sanctions for (un)ethical behavior

According to seminal utility-based theories of norm-violating and unethical behavior, the decision to lie involves trading-off the potential benefits of dishonesty against the potential costs if caught. However, even in paradigms with zero risk of sanctions, individuals do not consistently cheat. Still more strikingly, most of the few findings available from studies implementing a sanctioning system run contrary to what would be expected based on utility-based accounts of dishonesty, showing increased cheating when there is a small risk of sanctions as compared to when the risk is zero. Given the striking nature of these findings and the general scarcity of corresponding evidence, we devised a targeted empirical test of the role of sanctions for dishonest behavior. Specifically, in two experiments, we manipulated the probability (i.e., 16.7% vs. 50%) that the factual truth of one's response in a cheating paradigm is checked. In Experiment 2, we further varied the severity of sanctions for being caught cheating. Results showed that the willingness to lie strongly decreased with increasing probability of being caught as well as with increasing severity of sanctions. As such, the results clearly support the theoretical notion that external costs influence unethical behavior, in the direction implied by utility-based models.

Does Perceived Peer Delinquency Amplify or Mitigate the Deterrent Effect of Perceived Sanction Risk?

ABSTRACTThe present article studies the interplay of perceived peer delinquency and perceived sanction risk in crime causation. Different sets of hypotheses are formulated. From Situational Action Theory (SAT), it follows that adolescents who have many delinquent friends are more frequently exposed to a crime-conducive moral context. As a consequence, they will more often feel tempted to engage in criminal behavior, which renders them more responsive to sanction risk. Rational Choice Theory (RCT) suggests that adolescents who have no or few delinquent friends are more responsive to sanction risk because these individuals have more informal costs following from punishment to fear. These hypotheses are tested with longitudinal data from the British PADS+ study. Results provide strong support for the propositions derived from SAT. Perceived peer delinquency conditions the effect of perceived sanction risk, and sanction certainty perceptions are most influential among adolescents with a large number of delinquent friends.

Pengaruh Good Governance Dan Whistleblowing System Terhadap Kepatuhan Wajib Pajak Dengan Risiko Sanksi Pajak Sebagai Moderasi (Studi Empiris Pada Wajib Pajak Di Kabupaten Sleman)

Tax compliance still needs to be improved by encouraging the implementation of transparent taxation, namely the transparency of tax management in all areas, both administrative and management of the use of funds derived from tax revenue. The real effort that must be done to implement the transparency is through the bureaucracy reform movement in the service system and tax administration that is through the implementation and implementation of Good Governance. Good governance is a well-executed organizational governance, by carrying out the principles of openness, justice and accountability in order to achieve the goals of the organization. The problems that will be studied by the researcher is a social and dynamic problem. Therefore, the researcher chooses to use quantitative research method to determine how to find, collect, process and analyze the data of the research result, so that this research is expected to give input for the need of strengthening of harmony between Good Corporate Governance and Whistleblowing System and the need to create system or policies and operational procedures of taxation sanction risk required for tax compliance implementation. The results showed that there is influence between the implementation of Good Corporate Governance to tax compliance, there is influence between Whistleblowing System on tax compliance, there is no influence between the implementation of Good Corporate Governance to tax compliance if moderated by the Taxation Sanction variable and there is influence between the application of Whistleblowing System against tax compliance if it is moderated by the Taxation Sanction variable.

Explicit vs tacit collusion: The effects of firm numbers and asymmetries

In an infinitely repeated game where firms with (possibly asymmetric) capacity constraints can make secret price cuts, we analyse the incentives for explicit collusion when firms can alternatively collude tacitly. Tacit collusion can involve price wars on the equilibrium path. Explicit collusion involves firms secretly sharing their private information to avoid such price wars, but this is illegal and runs the risk of sanctions. We find that, in contrast to the conventional wisdom but consistent with some empirical evidence, illegal cartels are least likely to arise in markets with a few symmetric firms, because tacit collusion is relatively more appealing in such markets. We discuss the implications for anti-cartel enforcement policy.

TOWARD A BIFURCATED THEORY OF EMOTIONAL DETERRENCE

AbstractSince Hobbes (1957 [1651] and Beccaria (1963 [1764]), scholars have theorized that the emotion of fear is critical for deterrence. Nevertheless, contemporary deterrence researchers have mostly overlooked the distinction between perceived sanction risk and fear of apprehension. Whereas perceived risk is a cognitive judgment, fear involves visceral feelings of anxiety or dread. Equally important, a theory explicating the influence of deterrence on both criminal propensity and situational offending has remained elusive. We develop a theoretical model in which perceived risk and fear are distinguished at both the general and situational levels. We test this theoretical model with data from a set of survey‐based experiments conducted in 2016 with a nationwide sample of adults (N = 965). We find that perceived risk and fear are empirically distinct and that perceived risk is positively related to fear at both the general and situational levels. Certain background and situational factors have indirect effects through perceived risk on fear. In turn, perceived risk has indirect effects through fear on both criminal propensity and situational intentions to offend. Fear's inclusion increases explanatory power for both criminal propensity and situational offending intentions. Fear is a stronger predictor than either self‐control or prior offending of situational intentions to offend.

The Next Step: A Spatiotemporal Statistical Model of the Birth and Death of Crime Hot Spots

The Criminology of Place is an important book. It brings together more than two decades of research by Weisburd and colleagues on the question of why it is that one street corner or block face can be in the 99th percentile of calls for service while an adjacent location is virtually crime free. The concentration of crime and disorder at discrete locations is one of the most striking empirical regularities in criminology not only because of its important implications for the strategic use of police to prevent crime but also for its implications for understanding the causes of crime. On its face the highly disproportionate concentration of crime at discrete locations is at odds with, or at least, is inexplicable with sociologically-based theories of the causes of crime that emphasize the role of community-level factors such social disorganization or collective efficacy or even higher level macro-structural forces such as inequality of opportunity. Similarly, economics-based theories of crime with their emphasis on the role of incentives such as sanction risk and legal alternatives to crime are silent on the phenomenon of crime hot spots. Weisburd, Groff, and Yang offer the most thorough currently available exploration of the capacity of extant theory to explain the hot spots phenomenon.

Predicting fitness to practise events in international medical graduates who registered as UK doctors via the Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board (PLAB) system: a national cohort study

BackgroundInternational medical graduates working in the UK are more likely to be censured in relation to fitness to practise compared to home graduates. Performance on the General Medical Council’s (GMC’s) Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board (PLAB) tests and English fluency have previously been shown to predict later educational performance in this group of doctors. It is unknown whether the PLAB system is also a valid predictor of unprofessional behaviour and malpractice. The findings would have implications for regulatory policy.MethodsThis was an observational study linking data relating to fitness to practise events (referral or censure), PLAB performance, demographic variables and English language competence, as evaluated via the International English Language Test System (IELTS). Data from 27,330 international medical graduates registered with the GMC were analysed, including 210 doctors who had been sanctioned in relation to at least one fitness to practise issue. The main outcome was risk of eventual censure (including a warning).ResultsThe significant univariable educational predictors of eventual censure (versus no censures or referrals) were lower PLAB part 1 (hazard ratio [HR], 0.99; 95% confidence interval, 0.98 to 1.00) and part 2 scores (HR, 0.94; 0.91 to 0.97) at first sitting, multiple attempts at both parts of the PLAB, lower IELTS reading (HR, 0.79; 0.65 to 0.94) and listening scores (HR, 0.76; 0.62 to 0.93) and higher IELTS speaking scores (HR, 1.28; 1.04 to 1.57). Multiple resits at either part of the PLAB and higher IELTS speaking score (HR, 1.49; 1.20 to 1.84) were also independent predictors of censure. We estimated that the proposed limit of four attempts at both parts of the PLAB would reduce the risk in this entire group by only approximately two censures per 5 years in this group of doctors.ConclusionsMaking the PLAB, or any replacement assessment, more stringent and raising the required standards of English reading and listening may result in fewer fitness to practice events in international medical graduates. However, the number of PLAB resits permitted would have to be further capped to meaningfully impact the risk of sanctions in this group of doctors.

HEURISTICS AND BIASES, RATIONAL CHOICE, AND SANCTION PERCEPTIONS*

The relevance of several cognitive heuristics and related biases for rational choice perspectives on crime, and for perceptions of sanction risk, were investigated. We present findings from a series of randomized experiments, embedded in two nationwide surveys of American adults (18 and older) in 2015 (N = 1,004 and 623). The results reveal that offender estimates of detection risk are less probabilistically precise and more situationally variable than under prevailing criminological perspectives, most notably, rational choice and Bayesian learning theories. This, in turn, allows various decision‐making heuristics—such as anchoring and availability—to influence and potentially bias the perceptual updating process.

Victorian Children's Literature: Experiencing Abjection, Empathy, and the Power of Love by Ruth Y. Jenkins

Reviewed by: Victorian Children's Literature: Experiencing Abjection, Empathy, and the Power of Love by Ruth Y. Jenkins Patrick C. Fleming (bio) Ruth Y. Jenkins, Victorian Children's Literature: Experiencing Abjection, Empathy, and the Power of Love. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Print. From its title, Victorian Children's Literature led me to expect an argument about nineteenth-century culture and society. I might be forgiven this assumption, since the book jacket promises revelations about "social, economic, religious, and national energies" and Jenkins's earlier book, Reclaiming [End Page 406] Myths of Power: Women Writers and the Victorian Spiritual Crisis (1995), had examined gender roles and the Victorian crisis of faith. Astute readers of Jenkins's subtitle—those drawn to the term "abjection"—might have more accurate expectations, for the book ultimately has less to do with the Victorian period than with Julia Kristeva. Though Jenkins discusses texts published between 1858 and 1911, Kristeva's writings, rather than anything particularly Victorian, provide the foundation holding the chapters together. She reads Victorian-era texts "through Julia Kristeva's theories of abjection, the beloved authority, and Herethics" (173). Citing the chapter on the "Adolescent Novel" in Kristeva's New Maladies of the Soul, Jenkins explains Kristeva's concept of subjects-in-process who, through literature, "can experiment with alternative constructs of self without the risk of sanction." For young readers, "the open psychic structure enables experimentation with personalities that endorse or challenge, test or develop responses to cultural values" (7). Jenkins explores how texts for adolescents challenge those values and allow for the reader's psychic development. Jenkins's approach is perhaps best revealed in the verb most often used in her claims: "illustrate." In chapter 2, the metaphor of bathing in The Water-Babies "illustrates a return to the Semiotic state for Tom" (25). In chapter 4, the experiences of Ralph, the narrator of The Coral Island, "illustrate what is at the heart of Kristeva's theories of the signifying process" (71) while Nesbit's The Story of the Treasure Seekers "illustrates a variety of opportunities for a beloved authority to acknowledge the emerging self" (83). In chapter 5, which is about animal narrators, Rambles of a Rat "illustrates the process Kristeva posits as necessary for the emergent self" (103) while "Black Beauty illustrates a reassessment of the inevitability or appeal of binaried constructs" (108). In each case, a Victorian text "illustrates" a concept from Kristeva (such as the signifying process, beloved authority, the emergent self, or binary constructs). Those readings are convincing, as far as they go, but in my view the most insightful and compelling readings come in the last two chapters. In chapter 6 Jenkins responds to interpretations of The Secret Garden as a restoration story that, in shifting attention from Mary to Colin, privileges male energy and re-establishes traditional social patterns. Jenkins instead reads the novel as offering "an alternative model of social interaction" that challenges the "Victorian discourse of competition," even though its 1911 publication puts it slightly outside the period (120–21). The chapter is framed by readings of Friedrich Fröebel's and Herbert Spencer's educational theories, claiming that "Fröebel's description of mother-love anticipates" a Kristevan dynamic that challenges Spencer's model of "competitive struggle" (123). In Jenkins's view, "Burnett is not just replacing one cultural model with another; she is [End Page 407] blurring the boundaries between them … dismantling the binary oppositions and offering a non-competitive, companion image in its stead" (131). So any interpretation that reads the novel's return to Colin as re-establishing traditional social patterns "falls into a trap built from binary constructs—that it is either Mary's or Colin's story, that theirs is a competitive relationship" (137). Jenkins's application of Kristeva offers an alternative interpretation, based in compassion rather than competition. Chapter 7 applies Kristeva's "maternal thinking" and Herethics to one of Christina Rossetti's less famous works, Speaking Likenesses. Jenkins shows how "Speaking Likenesses illustrates the dynamic relationship of abjection's sublime, empathy, and love central to Herethics" (145). Jenkins situates her reading within the critical reception of Rossetti's text, which since its publication has been criticized...

Can Prostitution Law Reform Curb Sex Trafficking? Theory and Evidence on Scale Substitution, and Replacement Effects

Sex trafficking, a pervasive problem in many parts of the world, has become increasingly salient to policymakers and the general public. Activists, politicians, and scholars continue to engage in debates about how best to curb it. This Article discusses one especially contentious dimension of these debates: does banning prostitution reduce sex trafficking? Or is legalizing prostitution the optimal approach? Or is there a third, better way? Proceeding both theoretically and empirically, this Article seeks to cast light on the relationship between different types of prostitution laws and the prevalence of sex trafficking and human trafficking. It attempts to make three contributions to the literature. First, it builds on existing theories of the link between the demand for purchased sex and the supply of sex-trafficking victims to create a simple ordinal measure of prostitution laws. This measure, which the Article dubs the Prostitution Law Index (PLI), captures not only whether prostitution overall is legal or illegal, but whether buying sex is legal or illegal and whether selling sex is legal or illegal, which better reflects the actual cross-country variation in prostitution laws. The PLI takes into account scale, substitution, and replacement effects in the market for prostitution, where scale refers to increases in the prevalence of trafficking that are caused by growth of the overall market for prostitution; substitution to decreases in trafficking caused by current consumers who purchase sex with trafficking victims and, based on the risk of criminal sanction, shift to instead purchasing sex with individuals who voluntarily sell sex, thereby crowding out trafficking victims; and replacement to decreases in trafficking caused by new voluntary sellers of sex who, incentivized by changes in prostitution laws, enter the market and crowd out trafficking victims. The PLI ranks prostitution laws across countries on a four-point scale (from 1 to 4), based on their expected effectiveness (from least to most effective) in reducing sex trafficking. Second, the study uses a recent dataset provided by the European Union to map the statistical relationship between PLI scores and prevalence of sex trafficking, based on the Article’s theory of scale, substitution, and replacement effects. The analysis suggests that there generally is an inverse relationship between a country’s PLI score and the prevalence of trafficking in that country. Greater legislative efforts to reduce scale and to increase substitution and replacement appear, on average, to be associated with lower levels of sex trafficking. Third, the Article presents a basic Difference-in-Differences analysis—on the basis of extremely limited data and thus with an unusually large number of caveats— of Norway’s 2009 prostitution law reform. Tentative results indicate that the Norwegian reform, which made it legal to sell but illegal to buy sex, may potentially have helped reduce the prevalence of trafficking there.

Examining Specific Deterrence Effects on DWI Among Serious Offenders

Deterrence research supports the idea that punishment curbs offending; however, results for the specific deterrent effects of drunk driving are more nuanced. This research is often limited in its use of non-offender samples, its failure to examine links between past sanctions and subsequent risk perceptions, and in its use of aggregate-level data, thereby precluding any exploration of individuals’ perceived sanction risks. The current study examines the relationship between 824 felony inmates’ experiences with formal legal sanctions for drunk driving and their risk perceptions for driving drunk as well as their hypothetical intentions to drive drunk. Results generally fail to support deterrence theory’s propositions, and instead uncover some positive punishment effects (higher drunk driving intentions among those sanctioned previously) net of important theoretical controls. Implications for subsequent research and policy making are presented.

Direct and Indirect Experiential Effects in an Updating Model of Deterrence

Objectives: Sanction risk perceptions are a central element of deterrence theory, but the process by which an offender’s direct and indirect criminal experiences contribute to future risk perceptions has been understudied. This note seeks to address this domain through an extension of updating model of Anwar and Loughran to account for two distinct information signals obtained by an offender through (1) their personal criminal experiences and (2) the criminal experiences of their family members. Further, this model is extended to assess for any differential updating according to the presence of low impulse control. Methods: Data for this analysis were obtained from the Pathways to Desistance study. Random effects models were employed to model the updating process directly. Results: Having criminal family members who did not get arrested during the current period had the most criminogenic effect upon one’s personal perception of sanction risk, but simply having family members commit crime, regardless of sanction status, appears to be criminogenic. Those with low impulse control place greater weight upon their personal information than vicarious information obtained from their family members. Conclusions: These findings offer some insight into a mechanism that may underlay the delinquent peer effect and warrants future inquiry.

INCENTIVES FOR COLLECTIVE DEVIANCE: GROUP SIZE AND CHANGES IN PERCEIVED RISK, COST, AND REWARD*

Research has demonstrated that the presence of others shifts decision‐making about risky/deviant behavior. One reason for this shift could be changes in the anticipated experience of formal sanctions, informal costs, and rewards. To investigate this possibility, this study conducted two randomized controlled trials with hypothetical vignettes, in which a range of how many other people were also involved in the criminal act defined the treatment conditions. Across two samples of university students (Ns = 396 and 263), the results revealed that as the size of the involved group increased, the anticipated experience of sanction risk and several informal social costs associated with engaging in the act decreased, and the anticipated experience of two rewards increased. Additional analyses suggest that, with one exception in each data set, these changes are not only tied to the solo/group distinction.

Traits and states at work: lure, risk and personality as predictors of occupational crime

ABSTRACTThis study linked individual characteristics to proximate factors operating in the moment of decision-making to predict occupational crime. We distinguished between people’s task-related conscience, as embodied by the Conscientiousness personality trait, and a more general moral conscience as embodied by the Honesty-Humility trait, hypothesizing that both traits are differentially related to the way situational characteristics, such as costs and benefits, are perceived. We operationalized the concept of ‘felt lure’ emanating from the benefits of a crime, defining it as an affective state that tempts people to commit a criminal act, and examined it next to perceived risk of sanction as a proximate predictor of criminal choice. In line with our predictions, Conscientiousness and Honesty-Humility significantly predicted occupational criminal choice as did felt lure and perceived risk. Specifically, perceived risk and felt lure mediated the relations between Conscientiousness and Honesty-Humility on the one hand, and occupational criminal choice on the other.

Consequences of legal risk communication for sanction perception updating and white-collar criminality

Scholars have long emphasized that communicating, or “advertising”, information about legal sanction risk is necessary for the success of deterrence-based crime policies. However, scant research has evaluated whether direct communications about legal risk can cause sanction perception updating, the updating of ambiguity in sanction perceptions, or changes in persons’ willingness to offend. No prior studies have evaluated sanction perception updating for white-collar crimes. To address this research void, the current study analyzes data from an experiment embedded in a recent national survey (N = 878). Multivariate regression models estimate the effect of providing participants with information about the “objective” arrest risk for white-collar offenses on their sanction perceptions. The findings provide the first evidence that such information, when it is inconsistent with individuals’ prior beliefs, causes them to update: (1) their perceptions of the certainty of arrest; (2) their ambiguity about arrest risk; and, indirectly, (3) their willingness to commit white-collar crimes. The results imply that individuals are willing to incorporate relevant information into their subjective beliefs about sanction risks. Importantly, however, they also make meaningful distinctions about the value of new information for understanding criminal risks.

Adolescent sex offender registration policy: Perspectives on general deterrence potential from criminology and developmental psychology.

Sex offender registration policies have expanded rapidly, now extending to adolescent offenders across the nation. Policies mandating registration are based, in part, on arguments that registration is needed to prevent dangerous sex offenders from committing additional offenses and that risk of registration deters would-be offenders from offending in the first place. Research suggests that registration does not serve the former specific deterrent function for adolescents, but less is known regarding the latter goal of general deterrence. The disciplines of criminology and developmental psychology both offer important theoretical perspectives, but these frameworks have yet to be applied to this unique context. Criminological theory on perceptions of sanction risk offers clear predictions about the potential for registration to serve as a deterrent for would-be adolescent sex offenders. Yet, the literature has not meaningfully acknowledged that (a) most adolescents are probably unaware of the parameters of registration (e.g., age restrictions, range of registerable offenses), and (b) even if adolescents are aware of registration risk, they are unlikely to be effectively deterred by it because of a variety of developmental vulnerabilities (e.g., psychosocial immaturity, perceived normativeness of certain nonviolent sexual offenses that can result in registration). We argue that key elements of criminological and developmental psychological theory must be integrated to gain a better understanding of whether sex offender registration policy can have a general deterrent effect for adolescents. We conclude with a call for interdisciplinary research that addresses the general deterrence gap and its role in guiding empirically driven policy reform.

Reputation Concerns of Independent Directors: Evidence from Individual Director Voting

This study examines the voting behavior of independent directors of public companies in China from 2004–2012. The unique data at the individual-director level overcome endogeneity in both board formation and proposal selection by allowing analysis based on within-board proposal variation. Career-conscious directors, measured by age and the director's reputation value, are more likely to dissent; dissension is eventually rewarded in the marketplace in the form of more outside directorships and a lower risk of regulatory sanctions. Director dissension improves corporate governance and market transparency primarily through the responses of stakeholders (shareholders, creditors, and regulators), to whom dissension disseminates information.

The Tragedy of Corruption

We investigate corruption as a social dilemma by means of a bribery game in which a risk of collective sanction of the public officials is introduced when the number of officials accepting a bribe from firms reaches a certain threshold. We show that, despite the social risk, the pursuit of individual interest prevails and leads to the elimination of honest officials over time. Reducing the size of the groups while increasing the probability of collective sanction diminishes the officials’ corruptibility but is not sufficient to eliminate the Tragedy of corruption that leads both firms and officials to earn less than in the absence of corruption.

Motivating Compliance Behavior Among Offenders

Research shows that procedural justice can motivate compliance through the mediating influence of either legitimacy or social identity. Using three waves of longitudinal survey data collected from 359 tax offenders, we examine whether procedural justice is important to offenders’ decisions to comply with future tax obligations despite fear of sanctions, and whether legitimacy and social identity processes mediate the relationship between procedural justice and compliance. Our results reveal that (a) legitimacy mediates the effect of procedural justice on compliance, (b) social identity mediates the procedural justice/compliance relationship, (c) identity seems to matter slightly more than perceptions of legitimacy when predicting tax compliance, and (d) perceived risk of sanction plays a small, but counterproductive role in predicting tax compliance. We conclude that normative concerns dominate taxpayers’ compliance decisions. Implications are relevant for understanding behavioral compliance and how procedural justice can motivate such behavior.

Current Regulations Related to Opioid Prescribing

It is the responsibility of medical professionals to do all that is possible to safely alleviate pain. Opioids are frequently prescribed for pain but are associated with the potential for misuse, addiction, diversion, and overdose mortality, and thus they are strictly regulated. To adhere to legitimate practice standards, physicians and other health care providers who prescribe opioids for pain, particularly on a long-term basis, need current information on federal and state laws, treatment guidelines, and regulatory actions aimed at reducing opioid-related harm. The number of opioid-prescribing policies is increasing as federal and state governments increase scrutiny to alleviate opioid-related problems in society. Failure to adequately comply with opioid-prescribing laws and policies may put a prescriber at risk for legal or regulatory sanctions. Necessary actions include thorough documentation of prescribing decisions and assessment and follow-up of patient risk for opioid misuse or addiction. Tools to check for patient adherence to the prescribed regimen include prescription monitoring databases and urine drug screening. This article presents an overview of the legal and regulatory framework surrounding controlled substances law. It further discusses recent actions at the federal and state level to prevent opioid-related harm.