| Special Workshop Title: | Law and Economics and Legal Scholarship |
| Author: | Henrik Lando, IVS and Center for Law, Economics and Financial Institutions at Copenhagen Business School (LEFIC) |
| Paper Title: | Prevention of Crime and the Optimal Standard of Proof in Criminal Law |
| Abstract: | The standard of proof in criminal law is
often viewed as determined by a trade-off between the unfairness of
convicting the innocent and the unfairness of acquitting the guilty.
This paper argues that prevention of crime should also be taken into
account when setting the standard of proof. A model is constructed in
which the optimal standard of proof is derived from a trade-off between
fairness and deterrence considerations. The main result is applied to
the crime of sexual violation.
* I wish to thank Steven Levitt, Peter Sørensen and Birgitte Sloth for helpful comments. |
This page was last updated on: 2003-05-04.