Despite an abundance of empirical evidence on crime spanning over 40 years, there exists no consensus on the impact of the criminal justice system on crime activity. We construct a new panel data set that contains all relevant variables prescribed by economic theory. Our identification strategy allows for a feedback relationship between crime and deterrence variables, and it controls for omitted variables and measurement error. We deviate from the majority of the literature in that we specify a dynamic model, which captures the essential feature of habit formation and persistence in aggregate behaviour. Our results show that the criminal justice system exerts a large influence on crime activity. Increasing the risk of apprehension and conviction is more influential in reducing crime than raising the expected severity of punishment.

中文翻译：

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重新探讨犯罪，威慑和惩罚

尽管有超过40年的丰富的犯罪经验证据，但对于刑事司法制度对犯罪活动的影响尚无共识。我们构建了一个新的面板数据集，其中包含经济理论规定的所有相关变量。我们的识别策略允许在犯罪和威慑变量之间建立反馈关系，并控制遗漏变量和测量误差。我们偏离了大多数文献，因为我们指定了一个动态模型，该模型捕获了习惯形成和总行为持久性的基本特征。我们的研究结果表明，刑事司法制度对犯罪活动影响很大。增加逮捕和定罪的风险对减少犯罪的影响要比提高预期的严厉程度更大。