ABSTRACT
The theme of this chapter is that modern day criminal justice policies seem to depart, in some cases rather dramatically, from the policies that the standard economic model of crime prescribes. The norms of proportionality of punishment and equal treatment appear to hold such popular appeal that they override, or at least temper, concerns about optimal deterrence, despite periodic efforts by legislatures to enact get-tough-on-crime policies. The chapter describes the various concepts of proportionality, and suggests that an important institutional factor in establishing proportionality of punishments is the sentencing discretion of judges. It answers the question of how well the prescriptions of economic theory reflect them. In doing so, the chapter focuses on the pure deterrence version of the model as originally described by Gary Becker, which takes as its goal the maximization of a welfare function that depends on the net harm from the crime plus the costs of enforcement.
