Question

2. In the city of Swiftsure, there is only one crime, armed robbery. The city recently decided to double the probability of imprisonment from 10 percent (10 percent of armed robberies result in a prison sentence) to 20 percent. Because the city has a fixed prison capacity, it also cut the average prison sentence in half, from 3 years to 1.5 years

a.Would you expect these changes in the city's crime policy to increase, decrease, or not affect the city's crime rate? Explain why

15 marks]

b. Would you expect these changes to increase decrease or not affect the total cost of crime (the sum of victim and prevention costs)

Answer 1

Answer:

a)I would expect that these changes to increase the city's crime rate because cutting the average prison sentence in half is a kind of boost(encouraging factor) for the criminals, especially for the repeated old prisoners who spent 3 years of imprisonment more than once (because the prisoner who spent only once might have changed and stopped that crime). The probability of imprisonment of 20% is not significant from the criminals point of view as there is still 80% chance that they can escape imprisonment.

b)It is related to the above answer. Since I would expect the crime rate to increase because of these changes, I would also expect these changes to increase the total cost of crime.