ACLE Compliance and Enforcement Seminar: Henk Elffers (VU Free University Amsterdam)
Does punishment work?
- Date
- 27 May 2013
- Time
- 11:45 -13:15
- Location
- Universiteitsbibliotheek
- Room
- Library of the University of Amsterdam - Potgieterzaal C0.01
Introduction to the Seminar
Within the rational choice paradigm, increasing costs of behavioral options is, in principle, an instrument for enhancing compliance. Harsher and more likely to be administered punishment is increasing expected costs. Whether that will or won’t lead to more compliance is, however, dependent on all other costs and benefits that play a role in the cost/benefit balance governing behavioral choices. In general, these various costs and benefits are different for different people. By distinguishing various cases, we can resolve the ongoing debate between law and economics (“punishment works”) and criminologists and penitentiary workers (“punishment does not work”).
About the Speaker
Prof. Henk Elffers graduated in mathematical statistics at the University of Amsterdam and got his Ph.D. in Psychology of Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam (1991), on a thesis on Income Tax Evasion. He held various research appointments at Mathematisch Centrum, now CWI (statistics), University of Utrecht (geography), Erasmus University Rotterdam (socio-legal studies) and University of Antwerp (law and psychology). He presently is a senior-researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement NSCR (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), and professor of empirical research into criminal law enforcement at VU University Amsterdam, department of Criminal Law and Criminology.
