TY  - JOUR
AU  - Piehl, Anne Morrison
AU  - Williams, Geoffrey
TI  - Institutional Requirements for Effective Imposition of Fines
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 16476
PY  - 2010
Y2  - October 2010
DO  - 10.3386/w16476
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16476
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16476.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Anne Piehl
Department of Economics
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
New Jersey Hall
75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ  08901-1248
E-Mail: apiehl@economics.rutgers.edu

Geoffrey Williams
New Jersey Hall
75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ  08901-1248
E-Mail: gwilliams@economics.rutgers.edu
M1  - published as Anne Morrison Piehl, Geoffrey Williams. "Institutional Requirements for Effective Imposition of Fines," in Philip Cook, Jens Ludwig, Justin McCrary, editors, "Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs" University of Chicago Press (2011)

M3  - presented at "Economical Crime Control Conference", January 15-16, 2010
AB  - A long theoretical literature in economics addresses the heavy reliance of the U.S. criminal justice system on very expensive forms of punishment -  prison - when cheaper alternatives - such as fines and other sanctions - are available.  This paper analyzes the role of fines as a criminal sanction within the existing institutional structure of criminal justice agencies, modeling heterogeneity in how people respond to various sanctions and threat of sanctions.  From research on the application of fines in the U.S., we conclude that fines are economical only in relation to other forms of punishment; for many crimes fines will work well for the majority of offenders but fail miserably for a significant minority; that fines present a number of very significant administrative challenges; and that the political economy of fine imposition and collection is complex.  Despite these facts, and with the caveats that jurisdictions vary tremendously and that there are large gaps in our knowledge about them, we build a model showing that it is possible to expand the use of fines as a criminal sanction if institutional structures are developed with these concerns in mind.
ER  -