Individual Perceptions of the Criminal Justice System

By Lance Lochner. 2007

372 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper empirically examines perceptions of the criminal justice system held by young males using longitudinal survey data from the recent National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort and the National Youth Survey. While beliefs about the probability of an arrest are positively correlated with local official arrest rates, they are largely idiosyncratic and unresponsive to information about the arrests of other random individuals and local neighborhood conditions. There is little support, therefore, for the `broken windows' theory of Wilson and Kelling (1982). Yet, perceptions do respond to changes in an individual's own criminal and arrest history. Young males who engage in crime but are not arrested revise their perceived probability of arrest downward, while those who are arrested revise their probability upwards. Beliefs respond similarly to changes in a sibling's criminal and arrest history. The perceived probability of arrest is then linked to subsequent criminal behavior. Cross-sectionally, youth with a lower perceived probability of arrest are significantly more likely to engage in crime during subsequent periods. Following an arrest, individuals commit less crime, consistent with deterrence theory and the fact that their perceived probability of arrest increases.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c12d27755dca5e086345df097dd93c343648e7d3

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Citations in the corpus

Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century (2013, background): “…risk are associated with failure (success) in avoiding apprehension (Bridges and Stone 1986; Piliavin et al. 1986; Paternoster and Piquero 1995; Pogarsky, Piquero, and Paternoster 2004; Pogarsky, Kim, and Paternoster 2005; Matsueda, Kreager, and Huizinga 2006; Lochner 2007; Hjalmarsson 2008).”
Learning about Academic Ability and the College Dropout Decision (2009, unknown): “If vt0i * and e t0 ðt0:t1Þ;i are normal, a convenient form exists for Eðvt1i *Þ, often called the posterior mean: Eðvt1i *Þ ¼ W1i * Eðvt0i *Þ þ W2i * GPAðt0:t1Þ;i* ð15aÞ ¼ Eðvt0i *Þ þ W2i * ½GPAðt0:t1Þ;i − aiðSðt0:t1Þ;i − EðSt0ðt0:t1Þ;iÞÞ − Eðvt0i Þ ; ð15bÞ where W1i * ¼ Varðet0ðt0:t1Þ;iÞ Varðet0ðt0”
TESTING ENFORCEMENT STRATEGIES IN THE FIELD: THREAT, MORAL APPEAL AND SOCIAL INFORMATION (2013, background): “Of course, this requires (some) individuals to have subjective expectations.10 While this case finds ample empirical support (e.g., Lochner 2007), there is still no clear-cut evidence of the extent to which threats change risk perceptions and thus behavior.”
What Do Economists Know about Crime (2008, unknown): “The data are based on those in Miron (1999). 30.”
BEHAVIORAL RESPONSES TO TAXPAYER AUDITS: EVIDENCE FROM RANDOM TAXPAYER INQUIRIES (2012, methodology): “In the present context, given data constraints, and in line with the fi ndings of Lochner (2007), we assume that the only information used to update perceptions arises from the individual’s own audit experience.5 We begin by clarifying the process by which taxpayers’ perceptions are updated after…”
Determinants of College Major Choice: Identification Using an Information Experiment (2015, unknown): “This is in contrast to other studies (e.g., Lochner 2007; Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner, 2010, 2011; Zafar, 2011a) where the separation between beliefs is much longer, typically months or years.”
Criminal Deterrence: A Review of the Literature (2017, methodology): “The best evidence on perceptions among a sample of active offenders comes from Lochner (2007), who reports that NLSY youth who self-report criminal involvement do, on average, have more accurate perceptions about arrest risks than noncriminally involved youth.”
Survey Measurement of Probabilistic Macroeconomic Expectations: Progress and Promise (2017, unknown): “Lochner (2007) combined NLSY97 data on arrest expectations and crime commission to estimate a random utility model of criminal behavior.”