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latin for twisted is a civil wrong that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act, includes unintentional and intentional

inadvertent accidents: hunting and car accidents, manufacturing defects: harm statistically predictable and intentional accidental for any particular item

deliberate harm, many are crimes. such as assault, battery, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional duress. The person who commits such an act may be sued for damages under tort law by the victim and also prosecuted under criminal law by the state.

The economic essence of tort law is its use of liability to internalize externalities created by high transaction costs.

plaintiff must have suffered an injury. fuel additive: no compensation for mere exposure to risk no compensation for dangerous acts w/o it

In order for the plaintiff to sue, according to the traditional theory, the defen- dant must have caused the plaintiff’s harm.

In addition to the two other elements, the plaintiff must usually demonstrate that the defendant breached a duty that he or she owed to the plaintiff, and that the breach caused the plaintiff’s harm.

permits the defense when the defendant is the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s harm. Under this, the defendant escapes liability if he satisfied the applicable standard of care to avoid the harm that he caused.

occurs when the same court awards different amounts of compensation to victims who suffered an identical injury.

is the actual evidence, or facts of the case, that prove a party is at fault for causing the other person harm, damages, or losses. answers question to but-for test

an action is a cause of an injury if, but for the action, the injury wouldn't have occurred. In other words, would the harm have occurred if the defendant hadn't acted in the way they did? If the answer is NO, then the action caused the harm.

refers to any behavior reducing the probability or magnitude of an accident.

The defendant’s act must be the of the plaintiff’s harm to establish legal liability under the traditional theory.

a sum of money sufficient to make the victim of an injury equally well off with the money and the injury as he or she would have been without the money or the in- jury

a variable under control of one person affects someone else’s utility

one person owes another a duty of care but fails to fulfill that duty

A negligent or intentional failure to act reasonably or according to law or duty

compares the defendant’s actual care and the care that a reasonable person would have taken under the circumstances

applies when the defendant could reasonably foresee how his conduct could cause harm or injury

gives the injurer all of the incentives for taking precaution

Both parties have incentives for efficient precaution under this.

both plaintiff and defendant at fault allocate damages in proportion to fault

a common law tort rule which bars plaintiffs from recovering for the negligence of others if they too were negligent in causing the harm.

attempts to formalize the intuitive notion that when the expected loss exceeds the cost of taking precautions, the duty of care has been breached: Injurer is negligent if MC of precaution is less than resulting MB

SC = wx +p(x)A
SC - expected social cost of accdients
wx = equals the total amount spent on precaution
p(x)A = the expected harm p(x)A is a decreasing function of precaution x

w = -p'(x*)A, MSB=MSC at x*

Cx=wx

B>Lp
Burden > Loss * Probablity

SC = wvxv + wixi + p(xv, xi)A.

Law should minimize the sum of the costs of crime and its prevention, which yields the

criminal law and policy should do what is morally right, regardless of whether doing so minimizes social costs. The right thing to do is to punish people who commit crimes by intentionally harming others, and the wrong thing to do is to punish people who are innocent.

An act should be treated as a crime and pun- ished if doing so reduces social costs. The severity of the punishment should be calibrated to minimize social costs.

(Latin for “a guilty mind”) is the legal term for criminal intent

the resolve or determination with which a person acts to commit a crime.

The fourth characteristic of a crime is the high standard of proof imposed upon the prosecution. Different for civil and criminal cases.

In a criminal action in common law countries, the prosecutor, to secure a conviction, must prove the defendant is guilty

In a civil case in common law countries, the plaintiff must prove the case by a

failed attempts at crime cause fear and other harm to the public.

People who commit crimes expose themselves to the risk of punishment. These three—imprisonment, probation, and fines—are by far the most common forms of punishment. Ex: incarceration, probation, fines execution, mutilation

TORT a sum of money that leaves the victim indifferent between the injury with compensation or no injury.

CRIMINAL is sum of money which would substitute for the crime and leave criminal indifferent about committing the crime

For crime, much of the harm is public. crimes threaten peace and security of society, intent to harm justifies punishment even if crime fails & plaintiff is the state

criminals vulnerable to civil suits. civil law and compensatory damages don’t deter criminals other wise criminal law would be unnecessary

Criminal punishments aim to deter crime, not provide compensation for harm. Criminal law focused on deterrence

the action of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences

careful consideration of illegal acts and means, without restraint of guilt or morality

is a term commonly used for a type of financial crime, usually involving theft of money from a business or employer. It often involves a trusted individual taking advantage of their position to steal funds or assets, most commonly over a period of time.

as number of crimes for a given level of seriousness

is punishment level times probability of being punished

When the benefits exceed the costs, individuals commit a crime

The costs would depend on the chances or probability of getting caught and the consequences of getting caught—the punishment in terms of jail time or a fine.

decreasing function of expected punishment

the proposition that an increase in expected punishment causes a decrease in crimes is the

Many crimes occur under diminished rationality. Temporary lapses from acceptable values and moral constraints. Temporary control of emotions lost and a crime committed Termed “Saturday Night Fever”

The proof of Saturday Night Fever is that a person wakes up on Sunday morning and thinks, “I can’t believe what I did last night!” Thus, young people often commit crimes when they temporarily lose control of their emotions and act impulsively.

A high discount rate means future means next to nothing to an imprudent individual. This prevents the actor from giving as much weight to future pun- ishment as he or she would ordinarily give.

is the discount rate at which the immediate benefits equal the expected future costs. Thus, an actor whose discount rate exceeds r* commits the wrong, and an actor whose discount rate falls short of r* does not commit the wrong

Criminal law should minimize the social costs of crime: costs of the act and prevention

Crime could be reduced by hiring more police and reducing prison sentences

Private individuals not public officials deter much crime (ex: burglar alarm) Do private citizens have incentives to invest optimally in crime prevention. Private deterrence works to redistribute crime

State should exhaust ability to punish with fines before

incarceration

General policies toward crime must be set by legislators and officials in the criminal justice system. For example, police have to decide where to send patrols in a city, and prosecutors have to decide which crimes to prosecute. Such general policies must be formulated with an eye to their aggregate effects, such as the social costs of crime.

y' = p’f + pf’

criminal’s marginal benefit = criminal’s marginal expected cost of punishment

p(x)f(x)

p= p(x)

The curve f(x) slopes up to indicate that the punishment becomes more severe as the crime becomes more serious, and f(x) lies above the payoff y(x) because the sanction is a punishment— that is, it exceeds the criminal’s payoff.

refers to the frequency or incidence of criminal activities within a specific population or geographic area. Calculated by amount of crime divided by population

The number of individuals incarcerated per population size within a given area or country. It measures the proportion of people serving time in prison. US is five times the rate in Britain and nine times the rate in Germany.

1. large cities have higher violent crime rates than suburbs

2. disproportionate amount of criminals are young males

3. violent criminals and victims are disproportionately Black

4. a smaller number of people commit a large proportion of violent crimes

The overall economic and societal impact caused by criminal activities, including property and personal losses and costs of preventing crime, both public and private

an inc. in expected punishment causes dec. in crime. the supply of crime is elastic with respect to punishment. increasing the resources that society devotes to the arrest, conviction, and punishment of criminals should reduce the harm causes by crime

The tendency of a convicted individual to re-offend or return to criminal behavior after being released from prison or completing a sentence.

Isaac Ehrlich found that there was no deterrent effect attributable to the severity of punishment, as measured by the average length of a prison sentence for robbery in 1940 and 1960, but there was a deterrent effect in 1950

studied relationship between draft evasion and penalties for that crime in the 1960s and 1970s. Concluded that a higher probability of conviction and a higher level of penalty caused a lower rate of drat evasion

Found that crime rates in the UK were an inverse function of the probability and severity of punishment

Argued that criminal law does not deter crime, increasing policing and harshness of punishment may deter crime

Legalization of abortion could account for decline in crime. This can account for half of the decline in the crime rate since 1991

findings on abortion rates & crime lose significance when regressions redone with more accurate crime rates for age cohorts

deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, and incapacitation

direct costs, such as building, maintaining, and staffing prisons, and the opportunity cost of losing productivity of imprisoned people

1. In 1980s mandatory sentencing replaced judicial

   discretion (x years in prison for x crime)

2. In 1990s, three strikes rule: three violent offense require life imprisonment many states have adopted (longer sentence for third felony)

Western Europe relies much more on fines, less on prison sentences. US criminal population differs from European criminal population

The “ultimate punishment” for a crime. Many countries have abandoned capital punishment

Empirical question about whether executions deter murder and save lives — Does capital punishment deter the crimes for which it is a penalty?