Preferences predict who commits crime among young men

Abstract

Understanding who commits crime and why is a key topic in social science and important for the design of crime prevention policy. In theory, people who commit crime face different social and economic incentives for criminal activity than other people, or they evaluate the costs and benefits of crime differently because they have different preferences. Empirical evidence on the role of preferences is scarce. Theoretically, risk-tolerant, impatient, and self-interested people are more prone to commit crime than risk-averse, patient, and altruistic people. We test these predictions with a unique combination of data where we use incentivized experiments to elicit the preferences of young men and link these experimental data to their criminal records. In addition, our data allow us to control extensively for other characteristics such as cognitive skills, socioeconomic background, and self-control problems. We find that preferences are strongly associated with actual criminal behavior. Impatience and, in particular, risk tolerance are still strong predictors when we include the full battery of controls. Crime propensities are 8 to 10 percentage points higher for the most risk-tolerant individuals compared to the most risk averse. This effect is half the size of the effect of cognitive skills, which is known to be a very strong predictor of criminal behavior. Looking into different types of crime, we find that preferences significantly predict property offenses, while self-control problems significantly predict violent, drug, and sexual offenses.

Dynamics of parasympathetic activity in violent incarcerated offenders before, during, and in recovery from an emotional inhibition task

“…It remains unknown if increasing baseline levels of PNS activity, for example, through HRV biofeedback training 41 , 42 , would help to reduce violent reoffending in this group, especially in light of results showing similar levels of Go/No-Go task performance in offenders compared to non-offender controls. Despite the pattern of task performance shown in the current violent offender sample, problems in self-regulation remain a strong predictor of violent crime 43 , and these problems may be most pronounced in certain subgroups of offenders. For example, people whose aggressive acts are better characterized as reactive rather than proactive 44 may show the most pronounced self-regulatory impairments coupled with a pattern of inflexible physiological responding.…”

Is Inequality in Subjective Well-Being Meritocratic? Danish Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data

“…However, inequality in subjective well-being is also important as we are ultimately interested in the well-being/utility/welfare of individuals (Oswald 1997). 4 Studies on inequality often use administrative registers and some studies also combine administrative registers with surveys but not on inequality in subjective well-being as we do (Karadja et al 2017, Epper et al 2020, Hvidberg et al 2021, Bastani and Waldenström 2021.…”

“…The economic performance of the Nordic countries often receives international attention. For example, US Senator Bernie Sanders highlighted Denmark as being the American Dream in his Democratic presidential nomination campaigns in 2016 and 2020(Moody 2016, Rasmussen 2020). …”

“…Implicitly, this assumes that individuals are equally accountable for residual variation due to differences in effort and luck.6 Card et al (2010) emphasize the Danish micro data and data infrastructure as a blueprint for data construction. Previous studies exploiting the data infrastructure to combine survey/experimental data and administrative data includeKreiner et al (2019),Epper et al (2020),Andersen and Leth-Petersen (2021),Hvidberg et al (2021), and Epper et al (2022). The survey question on well-being we use was included as part of a bigger data collection that focused on experimental elicitation of economic preferences(Epper et al 2020(Epper et al , 2022.…”

“…Previous studies exploiting the data infrastructure to combine survey/experimental data and administrative data includeKreiner et al (2019),Epper et al (2020),Andersen and Leth-Petersen (2021),Hvidberg et al (2021), and Epper et al (2022). The survey question on well-being we use was included as part of a bigger data collection that focused on experimental elicitation of economic preferences(Epper et al 2020(Epper et al , 2022. Including these preference measures in our analysis does not change the conclusions and since it requires a lengthy description of the elicitation procedure and construction of the preference measures, we have chosen not to include it.…”