Becker’s Nobel Prize winning essay “Crime

economic scholars have not only theorized the reasons for reduction in crime but have published analysis’s on criminal behaviour and criminal justice. Too often, their theories are later critiqued harshly by their colleagues and lose repute. “Practically all the diverse theories agree, however, that when other variables are held constant, an increase in a person’s probability of conviction or punishment if convicted would generally decrease, perhaps substantially, perhaps negligibly, the number of offences he commits (Becker, pg. 9)”. This is known as deterrence and many economists have hypothesized on the best methods of optimal deterrence. One assertion that has found celebrated acclaim within the United States is the theory of “Broken Windows ” written b