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Do Citizens Know Whether Their State Has Decriminalized Marijuana? Assessing the Perceptual Component of Deterrence Theory
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Robert MacCoun
Published/Copyright:
June 17, 2009
Deterrence theory proposes that legal compliance is influenced by the anticipated risk of legal sanctions. This implies that changes in law will produce corresponding changes in behavior, but the marijuana decriminalization literature finds only fragmentary support for this prediction. But few studies have directly assessed the accuracy of citizens’ perceptions of legal sanctions. The heterogeneity in state statutory penalties for marijuana possession across the United States provides an opportunity to examine this issue. Using national survey data, we find that the percentages who believe they could be jailed for marijuana possession are quite similar in both states that have removed those penalties and those that have not. Our results help to clarify why statistical studies have found inconsistent support for an effect of decriminalization on marijuana possession.
Published Online: 2009-6-17
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
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- Macroeconomic Instability and Corporate Failure: The Role of the Legal System
- Prevention of Crime and the Optimal Standard of Proof in Criminal Law
- Does a Rise in Maximal Fines Increase or Decrease the Optimal Level of Deterrence?
- Benchmarks and Economic Analysis
- Pass a Law, Any Law, Fast! State Legislative Responses to the Kelo Backlash
- The Problem of Shared Social Cost
- A Cost of Tax Planning
- Never Two Without Three: Commons, Anticommons and Semicommons
- Unavoidable Accident
- Protecting Private Property with Constitutional Judicial Review: A Social Welfare Approach
- Measuring Criminal Spillovers: Evidence from Three Strikes
- Corruption on the Court: The Causes and Social Consequences of Point-Shaving in NCAA Basketball
- Valuation of Quality of Life Losses Associated with Nonfatal Injury: Insights from Jury Verdict Data
- Belief in a Just World, Blaming the Victim, and Hate Crime Statutes
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- The Structure of Incremental Liability Rules
- Firms' Motivations for Environmental Overcompliance
- Contingent Fees, Signaling and Settlement Authority
- Rethinking the Economic Model of Deterrence: How Insights from Empirical Social Science Could Affect Policies Towards Crime and Punishment
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- The Choice in the Lawmaking Process: Legal Transplants vs. Indigenous Law
- Building Encroachments
- Reporter's Privilege and Incentives to Leak
- Decision Analysis on Whether to Accept a Remittitur
- Deterrence in Rank-Order Tournaments
- Self-Defeating Subsidiarity
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