THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CRIME AND INCARCERATION AMONG THE AMERICAN STATES1

Data from the 50 states for 1975 are analyzed to try to separate the presumed reciprocal effects on each other of crime rates and incarceration rates. Two-stage least-squares regression shows no significant effect of crime on incarceration nor of incarceration on crime. Incarceration rates are affected mainly by the percentage of blacks in the state population. Crime rates are significantly influenced by urbanization, region, mean income, and unemployment.     

Abolition of plea bargaining in the coast guard

In the administration of criminal justice, the abolition or restriction of plea bargaining has raised many issues. Of primary concern is the impact on court systems and case dispositions. This research note looks at the Coast Guard military justice system and its 1975 decision to abolish pretrial agreements, effectively eliminating plea bargaining in that system. Studying criminal cases from 1973 to 1978, we determine if that intervention in a time series exhibits any potency. Specifically, what difference did the abolition of plea bargaining make? We find that the abolition of plea bargaining did not make much of a difference to the Coast Guard military justice system, similar to the conclusions drawn from studies of civilian courts.     

Legal rules and the basis for evaluating economic losses

Damages or a loss in economic well-being can be measured by either the maximum sum people would pay to avoid the loss, or by the minimum compensation they would require to accept it. These alternative bases for evaluation have been assumed to yield fully equivalent measurements, and as a consequence no discrimination is usually made between them in assessment procedures. However, contrary to this presumption recent evidence from survey studies and from real exchange experimental tests shows that measures of values vary widely depending on which of the two bases is used. As an accounting of losses in economic welfare often figures prominently in the settlement of disputes and in the establishment of legal rules, this disparity can cause considerable ambiguity and lead to unintended and undesired outcomes: it can undermine negligence and nuisance determinations and project feasibility judgments, can bring about seriously incorrect assessments of losses and inadequate indemnification of damages, and can bias determinations over a range of other instances where measures of economic values are used.