18 The Crime/Tort PuzzleRead more at location 5700
Note: Differenza tra civile e penale per quanto concerne la pena: gli illeciti nel primo ambito non originano da intenzione per cui la deterrenza non ha un ruolo nel calcolo del danno e quindi della pena. Non esiste un "danno atteso". Tutto si calcola ex post eguagliando pena (risarcimento) e danno effettivo Il sistema giuridico ha due sottosistemu: civile e penale. Perchè? Perchè una rapina appartiene al penale e un incidente al civile? Non si potrebbe unire il tutto?… Tabella delle differenze: 1) chi persegue? Il privato nella tort law il procuratore pubblico nella crime 2) chi oncassa le multe? la vittima nella tort lo stato nella crime 3) standard di prova? più elevati nella crime 4) intenzione? richiesta nella crime. 5) diritto al processo? garantito nella crime. 6) numero ottimo di illeciti? zero solo nella crime dove nn possono esistere infrazioni efficienti (a costo zero di applicazione). 7)Stogma? solo nella crime 8) moltiplicatore prob? solo nella crime... Il sistema unico è esistito in Islanda ed è durato x tre secoli. Ma era superiore?… Ragioni x la statalizzazione dell'accusa: la vittima potrebbe nn avere le risorse x procedere. Si rimedia rendendo trasferibile il diritto/dovere di procedere... Alcuni delitti hanno natura diffusa cosicchè la persecuzione diventa un bene pubblico. È un problema anche attuale e lo si risolve con la class action ma sarebbe ancora meglio affrontato grazie alla trasferibilità del diritto a perseguire... Alcuni crimini producono danni alla vittime e paura diffusa... Se l'imputato è insolvente nessuno lo perseguirà se nn lo stato. Soluzioni. Gli imputati insolventi sono pochi se le pene alternative sono forti (schiavitù, vendita organi). Potrebbe essere lo stato che paga la multa alla vittima x incentivarla a convenire (una variante della taglia). C'è sempre una convenienza a persegiire: la tutela della deterrenza personale... Non esiste una struttura ottima x incentivare la vittima. Ma nn esiste neanche x lo stato... Qualcuno dice che rinunciare alla pubblica accusa e all'obbligatorietà dell'azione penale conduce alle faide e alla vendetta infinita: la vittima deve essere allontanata dalla scena penale. Tuttavia è il monopolio della violenza ad evitare le faide nn l'obbligatorietà dell'azione (xchè mai nn dovrei vendicarmi contro un procuratore che agisce contro di me?). L' obbligatorietà costituisce solo un incentivo (tramite le sanzioni) ad agire, incentivo che la vittima e i cacciatori di tagli hanno cmq in altra forma (deterrenza privata e incasso dellamulte la prima, incasso delle taglie i secondi)... Posner: la pena ottima combina quantità e probabilità ma in un sistema privato la prob. nn è controllabile. In realtà è possibile fissarla manovrando sulle taglie e sulla regolamentazione dei bounty killer... Costo della pena: multa pagata dal condannato (pari al danno subito dalla vittima) - taglia incassata dal procuratore (danno subito dalla società)... Un primo discrimine: la "civilizzazione" del diritto è possibile laddove il criminale è solvibile oppure laddove la deterrenza è privatizzabile (posso far sapere in anticipo al potenziale criminale che sarò difeso). Non è possibile se la vittima è anonima tipo rapine all'autogrill... Le considerazioni teoriche sono compatibili con la distinzione nei fatti tra crimini e infrazioni?... C'è chi dice sì: il criminale è più spesso insolvente (essendo scarse le prob. di catturarlo le multe devono essere altissime)... Altro problema: i falsi procuratori che incriminano nnocenti x incassare la taglia. Oppure: procuratore vittima e criminale inscenano un falso reato x incassare la taglia. Nella pratica si nota come l'incertezza del processo nn viene compensata da risarcimenti maggiori del danno. Perchè? Forse proprio x nn alimentare le frodi con rosarvimenti eccessivi. Alcuni interpretano il danno punitivo come un moltiplicatore che ha qs funzione anzichè come un sostituto dello stigma. Anche il fatto che la deterrenza nn sia un problema spiega l'assenza di moltiplicatori... Altra categoria di illeciti da nn depenalizzare (x lo meno da nn devolvere ai bounty killer): quelli che si prestano a manipolazione e a falsi positivi... Nota che l'argomento dei taroccamenti vale ancora oggi con i pentiti: x incassare un compenso possono taroccare il processo... Con qs anche la pubblica accusa può bluffare, magari minacciando il carcere x estrarre info.... L'argomento poi condanna i cacciatori di taglie quanto la pubblica accusa. In realtà favorisce l'accusa nelle mani della vittima per produrre deterrenza privata... Tre modi x ovviare alle frodi: 1) considerarle un reato grave 2) chiedere standard più elevati di prova 3) prevedere sempre il processo. Ebbene, la teoria è confermata dai fatti... Altra differenza tra penale e civile: il primo illecito ha una rilevanza morale, il secondo no. Da ciò deriva: il tipo di pena (carcere), lo stigma, il peso delle prove. Domanda: è giustificata qs inferenza... In realtà ci sono diversi modi per catalogare gli illeciti, nn sempre i conti tornano: es. il divieto di sosta è civile ma è xseguito dal pubblico. Tuttavia ci sono regolarità: chi xsegue incassa anche le multe (è chiaro che deve avere un incentivo). Ciò nn toglie che ci siano inconvenienti: taroccamento dei processi... Ricapitalando. Per la depenalizzazione ci sono due problemi: 1) crimini a vittima indistinta 2) crimini soggetti a taroccamento. Per superare il primo si ammette l'azione dei bounty killer (con standard di prova più elevata, multe più alte e la previsione di frode aggravata); nel secondo caso si pone la riserva alla vittima (multe basse, c'è giá l'incentivo della deterrenza xsonale, e standard di prova più bassi). Il caso del procuratore pubblico sembra superfluo... Da quanto detto possiamo concludere che le rapine dovrebbero essere depenalizzate e gli incidenti criminalizzati, almeno x quanto riguarda il perseguimento... I tre incentivi che conssidera la teoria giuridica: 1) incentivo a commettere il crimine 2) a prevenirlo 3) a perseguirlo. Ricordiamo che il criminale paga una multa allo stato, il danneggiatore al privato. Nel primo caso c'è intenzionaità nel secondo no. L'insolvenza è più prob. nel primo caso... Consideriamo solo l'incentivo a prevenire in un mondo a costo zero d'applicazione... Incidente (investimento pedoni): il disincentivo ad investire è il medesimo ma l'incentivo a prevenire da parte della vittima è più alto nella crime law... Rapina. Se la pena è efficiente solo i reati efficienti vengono commessi e quindi ogni precauzione è uno spreco di risorse, ma solo la tort law garantisce l'assenza di precauzioni visto che risarcisce completamente la vittima... Naturalmente le cose si complicano se consideriamo gli altri incentivi e si complicano ancora di più se allentiamo le inverosimili ipotesi... 18@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@§@@@@ Edit
OUR LEGAL SYSTEM has two quite different sets of rules designed to do the same thing: Deter people from injuring others by making it costly to do so.Read more at location 5701
O. J. Simpson was first acquitted of the crime of killing his wife and then convicted of the tort of killing his wife. In another, Michael Jackson was accused of child molestation. The civil case settled out of court, at which point the criminal case was dropped, presumably because the witnesses were no longer willing to testify.Read more at location 5703
could we have a functioning legal system in which all offenses were treated as torts or all offenses as crimes,Read more at location 5708
why, for example, the system in which offenses are prosecuted by the victim requires a lower standard of proof for conviction and relies more heavily on monetary punishmentsRead more at location 5711
Part I: Should We Abolish the Criminal Law?Read more at location 5713
Note: T DEPENALIZZAZIONE. OVVERO TRASFORMARE TUTTE LE PENE IN RISARCIMENTO: COSTO NETTO PARI A ZERO Edit
it is possible to have a functioning legal system in which all offenses are torts because the Icelanders had such a system, and it functioned for more than three centuries.Read more at location 5714
1. The victim of an offense may not have sufficient resources to prosecute it.Read more at location 5719
This problem can be dealt with by making tort claims transferable, as was done in saga period Iceland. A victim with inadequate resources gives or sells his claim to someone better able to prosecute it.Read more at location 5719
2. Some offenses cause diffuse injury, so nobody has an adequate incentive to prosecute them.Read more at location 5722
This is dealt with under current law by class actions. It could be better dealt with by making claims for torts that had not yet been litigated, including ones that had not yet occurred, transferable.Read more at location 5723
3. Some offenses result in a diffuse injury difficult to observe, along with an observable injury to a single victim. The standard example is a crime that both injures the victim and imposes fear on potential victims.Read more at location 5726
even under tort law victims are not fully reimbursed ex ante, since there is some chance they will fail to collect damages, and, in most circumstances, they must pay their own legal costs, so there is still good reason to fear being a victim.Read more at location 5729
If an offender is judgment-proof, there is no incentive for the victim to prosecute him, so prosecution must be by the state.Read more at location 5733
If convicted defendants who were unable to pay money damages could be sold into slavery or dismembered for organ transplants, fewer defendants would be judgment-proof,Read more at location 5735
such unattractive outcomes would provide offenders an incentive to make sure they were able to payRead more at location 5737
The state could pay the fines of judgment-proof offenders to the victim/prosecutors, thus providing them an incentive to prosecute, and impose criminal punishments, thus deterring offenders. Such a bounty system, analogous to a voucher system for schooling (or the GI Bill, which was a voucher system for higher education), combines private prosecution with public funding.Read more at location 5739
The victim of a tort may commit himself to prosecute even judgment-proof defendants in order to deter offenses against him,Read more at location 5742
5. It is impossible to construct legal rules that give victims the optimal incentive to prosecute.Read more at location 5744
the best possible system of private enforcement is inferior to an ideal system of public enforcement, although not necessarily to an actual system of public enforcement.Read more at location 5745
for any offense there exists some optimal amount and probability of punishment. But once we set the amount of punishment in a system with private prosecution we have no way of controlling the probability.Read more at location 5748
An ideal public enforcement system, on the other hand, could set probability and punishment independently, making an ideal public enforcement system superior to even an ideal private one, at least in that respect.Read more at location 5753
The solution to this problem is for the legal system to set, not the punishment if convicted, but the expected punishment: fine paid times probability of conviction.Read more at location 5756
Consider an offense for which the average return from catching and punishing an offender is negative: It costs more to catch and convict him than the fine collected. In order for prosecutors to stay in business, victims must pay enforcers to take over their claims and prosecute them. The victims are still selling their claims but at a negative price.Read more at location 5779
The reason to do so is deterrence. The victim wants potential offenders to know that if they commit an offense against him they risk punishment.Read more at location 5783
This works for offenses for which it is possible to make deterrence a private good, such as burglary.Read more at location 5784
It does not work for offenses that sell at a negative price for which deterrence cannot be made a private good because the offender does not know enough about the victim to be deterred—anonymous victim offenses. These were the sort of offenses—highway robbery,Read more at location 5792
A legal system that permitted penal slavery, or one that allowed the sale of organs from executed felons, or one set in a society where individual reputation was important and stigma thus provided a powerful and efficient punishment, would have lower punishment costs than one without those features.Read more at location 5797
Does the tort/crime distinction in modern law correspond reasonably closely to the distinction between those offenses that are and are not dealt with adequately by private enforcement? Landes and Posner argue that it does. They argue that torts are, generally speaking, offenses detected with probability near one, hence for which the problem of getting the proper probability/punishment combination disappears.Read more at location 5801
An alternative defense of the current crime/tort division is the argument that criminals are more likely to be judgment-proof against the optimal punishment, unable to pay the corresponding fine, than are tortfeasors.Read more at location 5809
crimes, such as burglary, are hard to detect, so the optimal probability of conviction is low, so the fine must be highRead more at location 5813
crimes are intentional, so criminals are likely to spend resources concealing them.Read more at location 5815
A second problem is that while the offenses we now classify as crimes are more likely than torts to be negative price offenses, they are less likely than torts to be anonymous victim offenses. A burglar deciding which house to burgle can choose to avoid houses with notices saying that their owners have paid in advance to have burglars prosecuted. A driver cannot readily adjust his level of care to take account of which other cars have notices on them saying that their owners have paid in advance to have drivers who run into them prosecuted.Read more at location 5818
Another important issue, touched on in chapter 15, is the problem of deliberately fraudulent claims. Under any system in which offenses sell at a positive price, there is an incentive to manufacture them, to frame potential defendants.Read more at location 5823
The English criminal system encountered this problem in the mid–eighteenth century. Because of concern that incentives for private prosecution were too low, the Crown established substantial rewards for successful prosecution of certain offenses such as highway robbery. The result was a series of scandals in which it appeared that the convicted offender either had been entrapped into committing the offenseRead more at location 5827
if victims of torts are successful litigants with probability less than one, as is surely the case, the result is an expected punishment predictably less than the damage done. The obvious solution is to add in a probability multiplier, to scale up the punishment of tortfeasors who are successfully sued to compensate for the failure to punish those who are not. One explanation for the lack of such probability multipliers is that they would be an invitation to fraud. Under current law someone is never better off as a result of being a victim of a tort; even if he successfully litigates it, all he gets is an amount sufficient to make up for the damage he has suffered.Read more at location 5833
a second category of offenses for which private enforcement may work poorly: positive value offenses for which it is relatively easy to manufacture false positive verdicts. It is not clear, however, that public enforcement avoids the problem.Read more at location 5840
it is sometimes said that the essential difference is that a crime is seen as a moral fault, a source of stigma, and a tort is not;Read more at location 5856
Crimes are sometimes thought of as distinguished by certain sorts of punishment, notably imprisonment and execution.Read more at location 5857
Crimes have a high standard of proof, require intent, are guaranteed a jury trial, have punishments often much higher than the damage done, pay fines to the state rather than the victim, and so on.Read more at location 5859
The answer, as I will attempt to show below, is that there are reasons, although perhaps not always compelling ones.Read more at location 5862
Fines are used in criminal law, but they tend to be for offenses, such as speeding or illegal parking, that have some of the other characteristics of torts.Read more at location 5864
Eighteenth-century English criminal law combined private prosecution with criminal punishments.Read more at location 5882
Looking at the table, we observe that under both systems the same actor controls prosecution and collects punishments. There are two obvious reasons for this. One is that collecting a damage payment provides an incentive to prosecute. The other is that the party who controls the prosecution can also drop the prosecution or, if that is forbidden, prosecute badly.Read more at location 5886
There is also a disadvantage to the combination: the opportunity it provides for fraudulent prosecution.Read more at location 5890
One of the reasons for the abandonment of the system of rewards in eighteenth-century England was that juries, knowing that witnesses might share in the rewards, rationally distrusted their testimony. The same problem arises today when juries know that witnesses for the prosecution in criminal trials are paid informants or have agreed to testify in return for a reduced sentence.Read more at location 5896
We next notice that the tort system is associated with relatively efficient punishments, the criminal with relatively inefficient.Read more at location 5900
The lower the cost of punishment, the lower the (net) cost of imposing it incorrectly. So it makes sense to combine less efficient punishments with a higher standard of proof.Read more at location 5905
One problem with efficient punishments is that, by making successful prosecution profitable, they create an incentive for fraudulent prosecutions. One way of controlling that is a high standard of proof. An alternative way is by making fraudulent prosecution—in the limiting case, any unsuccessful prosecution—itself tortious. A weaker version of that is to require the losing party in a tort suit to pay the other side’s legal expenses as is currently the rule in England,Read more at location 5906
There are three plausible explanations for the absence of probability multipliers in tort law.Read more at location 5910
Probability multipliers make it profitable to be the victim of an offense, provided your probability of successful prosecution is sufficiently high relative to the average probability from which the multiplier is calculated.Read more at location 5911
A second explanation is that, because torts are not intentional, they are usually not concealed, and the probability of apprehension and conviction is thus arguably higher than for crimes.Read more at location 5913
The higher the punishment, the less likely it is that the offender can pay it as a fine.Read more at location 5919
The fact that Anglo-American law guarantees the defendant the opportunity for a jury trial for criminal cases but not always (except in the United States) for civil cases is puzzling. One possible explanation is that it serves the function of making fraudulent prosecution more difficult.Read more at location 5922
The category “desired level of offenses” requires some explanation. There is a sense in which the desired number of murders is positive—given the cost of preventing them.Read more at location 5928
What I mean here by the desired level is the level that would be efficient if the cost to the legal system of achieving that level were zero. If we could costlessly deter all murders, we would, despite the inconvenience to those of us with rich uncles. If we could costlessly deter all traffic accidents, we would not, because the ways in which people avoid having traffic accidents when the expected penalty is high, for example, by not driving, sometimes cost more than the reduction in accidents is worth.Read more at location 5930
We come finally to the question of stigma, the one punishment with negative cost. It is an unusual form of punishment in another respect as well: The direct benefit from imposing it is a public, not a private, good.Read more at location 5946
Stigma does, however, help solve the problem of deterring offenses that are costly to punish. Hence it is not surprising to see its use combined with the use of inefficient punishments—that is, with the criminal law.Read more at location 5949
Legal rules affect behavior on many margins. They affect incentives to commit offenses, incentives to prosecute them, and incentives to prevent them.Read more at location 5958
the question of what ought to be a tort and what ought to be a crime will be ambiguous, at least until we develop a theory good enough to predict not only the sign but also the size of such effects.Read more at location 5959
I hope to demonstrate one reason why figuring out whether our present allocation of offenses between the two systems is efficient is a hard problem.Read more at location 5963
one effect of treating an offense as a tort instead of a crime is to reduce the net damage suffered by the victim and thus his incentive to prevent the offense.Read more at location 5967
All offenders are detected, and none are judgment-proof. Within this simplified framework what is the right incentive for the victim to prevent the offense and what system gives it?Read more at location 5975
consider accidents in which a car runs into a pedestrian and only the pedestrian is injured. We may attempt to deter such accidents either with a tort rule, in which the driver of the automobile is liable to the victim for the damage done, or with a criminal rule, in which the driver pays a fine but the victim does not receive it. From the standpoint of the driver, the two rules (with the same penalty) generate the same incentive.Read more at location 5977
Under the tort rule the pedestrian suffers no cost from being run into, since his damages are fully compensated by the driver. It follows that the pedestrian has no incentive to take precautions. Under the criminal rule, on the other hand, the pedestrian pays the full cost of the accident. It follows that he has the efficient incentive to take precautions to prevent it.Read more at location 5981
Generalizing beyond the simplified example in which only one party suffers a loss, the efficient rule is that each party bears his own loss and pays a fine equal to the loss that the accident imposes on the other party.Read more at location 5985
Consider next burglary, still in a world of costless enforcement. The legal system sets the penalty for burglary equal to the damage done, the value of what is stolen.Read more at location 5988
The textbook example is Posner’s hunter, lost and starving, who comes across a locked cabin in the woods, breaks in, feeds himself, and telephones for help.Read more at location 5990
In this world a homeowner who puts a lock on his door is wasting his own money and the burglar’s time.Read more at location 5991
The optimal level of precaution to prevent burglary is the same as the optimal level of precaution for a supermarket to take in preventing its customers from buying its vegetables: zero.Read more at location 5993
Under a criminal rule, on the other hand, the criminal takes from the victim but repays the state, so the victim has an incentive to prevent the burglary.Read more at location 5996
Hence, at least in the simplified world of costless enforcement and considering only the incentive of the victim to defend himself, burglary ought to be a tort.Read more at location 5997
If it turns out that tort law gives the right incentives for some decisions by some parties and criminal law gives the right incentives for other decisions by other parties, we are left with no clear answer in theory to the question of which offenses should be under which legal system—and the difficult practical problem of trying to figure out which of the two imperfect solutions we should prefer.Read more at location 6001
There is a set of offenses that are especially difficult for private enforcement to deal with: negative price offenses with anonymous victims. Such offenses provide a plausible argument against a pure tort system.Read more at location 6005
The current sorting of offenses between the categories of crime and tort has at most a modest relation to what that analysis suggests would be an efficient division.Read more at location 6009
