Abstract
Using Italian data in the period 1999–2002, we estimate the impact of trial delays on the willingness to commit crimes against property. However, the endogenous relationship that links the former to the latter could generate serious problems of inconsistency in the estimation procedure. Since geographical distance can be considered an exogenous determinant of the probability of belonging to peripheral courts, which are typically considered less efficient than main ones, it should represent a valid candidate instrument for trial delay. Estimates obtained by means of Two-Stage Least Squares show a significant positive effect of trials duration on crimes, supporting the hypothesis that some criminals are either sensitive to the discounting process of punishment or aware of the probability of prescription, or both. As a side result, we also find a relationship between courts’ fragmentation and trial duration. This suggests that an optimal dimension of courts is likely to exist, and that policy makers should take this into consideration in the design of the jurisdictional geography.
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Notes
Despite in Italy the debate has been so far dealing with the inefficiency of civil proceedings (Marchesi 1998, among others), criminal ones normally take longer than in other countries to be completed.
This rule, which is not peculiar to Italy, states that a crime is considered like never been committed if a judgement has not yet been pronounced within a certain period of time.
Moreover, a recent reform introduces the reduction of prescription terms, thus exacerbating an already serious status of the Italian judicial environment.
In Italy, a province is an administrative sub-division of a region, which is an administrative sub-division of the state. A province consists of several administrative sub-divisions called comune. The country was divided into 20 regions and 103 provinces at the time we collected our data. As of 2006, there are 110 provinces.
In addition, there is a vast literature that assesses the incapability of the maximum penalty of reducing murders. In fact, an inverse correlation has been documented: when states abolish death penalty a corresponding drop in capital crimes is reported (Pfohl 1994, chapter 3, among others). This indirectly indicates that the cost-benefit analysis plays no role in determining the choice of committing murders.
Think about rarely denounced cellular phones thefts. Or again, often people are not sure wether someone stole their wallet or they simply lost it. They go to the police, but they may report incorrect events.
Percentages refer to the period of time considered in the empirical analysis (1999–2002). See next section for further details.
Data are provided by the Italian Ministry of Justice and ISTAT.
This is a survey carried out by the Italian National Institute of Statistics in the period 1987–1991 on a sample of about 24,000 households.
Prescription is correlated with the maximum punishment settled by the law for any type of crime.
These are crimes for which the Judicial Authority has started a legal action.
For the computation of trials duration see Marselli and Vannini 1999, Chapter 7.
On average in the period 1999–2002 the unemployment rate is less than 4.6 in the North-West, 4.0% in the North-East, 7.1 in the Center, and 18.4% in the South (data are provided by ISTAT).
It is even possible that a higher income also implies its greater concentration. In this case, inequalities increase the incentive for illegal appropriation (Fajnzylber et al. 2002).
www.istat.it for details on computation of this index. This variable is available only at a regional level.
Immigration could also be significant in explaining crime propensity. However, it is documented (Ministry of the Interior) that the most part of crimes committed by immigrants concerns illegal ones. Obviously, data on illegal immigrants are not available. Moreover, immigrants are often located in larger towns and highly populated areas. Hence, our measure of population density should be able to capture the effect of immigration.
Hausman tests compare fixed and random effects specifications. Statistics are reported at the bottom of each table in Sect. 7. Since all tests reject the hypothesis of the absence of correlation between provincial specific effects and the error term, we only report estimates obtained with a fixed-effects model.
This is like saying that one is not estimating a reduced form of a crime equation, but she is trying to estimate a structural one. This induces a violation of OLS basic hypothesis of estimation, i.e. the absence of correlation between independent variables and the error term in the estimated equation. See Cameron and Trivedi (1998) for further details.
For example, in order to reach prescription terms, one may pay to induce delays.
First Instance Courts are located in the main town of the province, while Courts of Appeals are located in the main town of the region (only the region of Valle d’Aosta, which belongs to the Court of Appeal of Torino, is an exception). However, in Italy there are 10 additional sub-regional courts of Appeals (three of them are detached sections of other courts) and 62 additional sub-provincial First Instance Courts which are settled out of the main towns.
Judges’ remuneration and their career concerns could also represent valid instruments for trial delays (Schneider 2005). However, this piece of information is not available for all Italian judicial districts, particularly at a first instance level.
This could be endogenous for first instance delays. In fact, even if a first instance sentence can interrupt prescription, the overall length of a proceeding (from the day the crime has been committed until the final sentence) cannot exceed the term indicated by the law for each crime plus a pre-determined share of this term (generally a half). Thus, if a first instance trial lasts long, it is possible that it induces a higher incentive to try and bet on prescription in the Appeal in order to exhaust the overall time available for judges to pronounce the final verdict.
The idea is that, when trials register abnormal delays, punishment could be less precise. Many factors can drive this outcome. For example, judges misrecall past information (Sherrod 1985), they get retired and other (less informed) take their place, documents might be lost, etc. In this case either victims or offenders may end up to be unsatisfied with sentences. This may induce a higher probability of appealing.
Each table reports outputs for the Hausman test performed comparing fixed and random effects estimation techniques. Hausman always rejects the null hypothesis of no correlation between fixed effects and the error at 1% and 5% level of confidence.
We also tried different specifications. In particular, we excluded observations relative to two autonomous provinces (Bolzano and Aosta) that have different ethnic origins. However, results remain almost unchanged in terms of the size of parameters and standard errors.
These are averages computed from Models 1 and 2.
This represents the computed ratio between average estimated parameters and per capita thefts in the period 1999–2002.
However, this result might be partially driven by endogeneity. In fact, when a certain crime is very widespread in some areas, judges tend to be relatively more severe with those committing it. This evidence emerges from our data. For example, racketing, which is a typical crime occurring in Southern regions, is punished with 29 months of jail in the South, while months are 22 in the North. However, due to the paucity of available instruments we could not treat punishment as endogenous in our estimates.
As opposite to what occurs for other types of crimes, the standard errors associated with fines in Table 7 are quite below the estimated parameters.
Moreover, income is also a good proxy of the rate of illegal immigration. However, data are available for legal immigrants only and are highly correlated with income. For reasons of collinearity with this variable, immigration has not been included among the regressors.
Interest rates differentials of 3% points were not difficult to observe during the period of our analysis.
Sargan statistics have been computed to jointly test the hypothesis of correct model specification and validity of instruments. Results support our choice of exogenous measures of distance and area in order to avoid possibly inconsistent estimates.
This is not incompatible with the fact that peripheral courts of Appeal are less efficient than main ones in a given region. What is likely to occur is that peripheral Courts of Appeal tend to reduce total workload for main courts, with the final result of lowering average trial duration in those regions where they are set up.
This is also suggested by Buscaglia and Ulen (1997) in the case of Latin American countries.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Marianna Belloc, Matthieu Chemin, Luisa Giuriato, Matteo Manera, Donato Masciandaro, Antonio Nicita and Maurizio Pontani for useful suggestions. I am particularly indebted to Margherita Saraceno for helpful discussions. I also thank all participants at the Third Conference on Law and Economics, Copenhagen Business School, June 2005; at the Conference of the Italian Society of Law and Economics, University of Siena, November 2005; at the workshop “Lawless finance", Bocconi University, Milan, March 2006; and at the ECSPC/CIDEI Conference, Rome September 2006. The usual disclaimer applies.
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Appendix
Appendix
Distribution of thefts every 1,000 inhabitants in Italy, 1999–2002. Source: Author’s elaboration on data provided by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT)
Distribution of robberies every 1,000 inhabitants in Italy, 1999–2002. Source: Author’s elaboration on data provided by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT)
Distribution of racketeering every 1,000 inhabitants in Italy, 1999–2002. Source: Author’s elaboration on data provided by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT)
Distribution of frauds every 1,000 inhabitants in Italy, 1999–2002. Source: Author’s elaboration on data provided by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT)
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Dalla Pellegrina, L. Court delays and crime deterrence. Eur J Law Econ 26, 267–290 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-008-9076-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-008-9076-4