ABSTRACT
Since the work of Gary Becker, economists have studied the impact of various aspects of the criminal justice system on crime rates. There has been, however, little analysis of the effects of criminal procedure on criminal behavior.1 This is surprising, because in the 1960s, the Supreme Court revolutionized criminal procedure in the United States, and its rulings were and remain controversial. The relevant decisions include the Miranda v. Arizona ruling of 1966, requiring the well-known warnings to suspects; the Gideon v. Wainwright ruling of 1963, providing all citizens the right to a lawyer at trial; and the Mapp v. Ohio ruling of 1961, excluding from trial evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment.2 Each of these changes was a radical transformation of the criminal justice system. Consequently, there was great interest in observing the effects of these new procedural rules. At the time of these decisions, however, the empirical techniques and theoretical models available to analyze the criminal justice system were unable to predict or detect the effects of the Supreme Court’s rulings. Although techniques have now been developed, this gap in the literature persists. Economists and other students of crime who embrace the rational models of criminal behavior have largely ignored procedural aspects of the system, instead focusing upon the detection and sentencing phases of the process.
