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A SIMPLE MODEL OF OPTIMAL HATE CRIME LEGISLATION
Author(s) -
GAN LI,
WILLIAMS ROBERTON C.,
WISEMAN THOMAS
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1111/j.1465-7295.2009.00281.x
Subject(s) - harm , legislation , hate crime , government (linguistics) , law enforcement , enforcement , simple (philosophy) , terrorism , economics , criminology , law and economics , political science , law , sociology , philosophy , linguistics , epistemology
We present a simple model of the effects of hate crime legislation. We show that even if the direct harm to victims of hate crime is the same as for other crimes, because of other differences in the effects it may still be optimal to exert a different level of law‐enforcement effort to deter or prevent hate crime. These differences also have previously unrecognized effects on the optimal level of effort by potential hate crime victims to avoid being victimized, thus affecting the efficiency of government policies that encourage or discourage such effort. In some cases, the optimal level of government effort may be lower for hate crimes than for other crimes. Our analysis suggests a role for policy tools that influence individual avoidance effort directly. We discuss the implications of our results for similar types of crime, including terrorism. ( JEL K42, K14, D02)