This paper presents a model of penalties that reconciles the conflicting accounts of optimal punishment by Becker, who argued penalties should internalize social costs, and Posner, who suggested penalties should completely deter offenses. The model delivers specific recommendations as to when penalties should be set to internalize social costs and when they should be set to completely deter off...

CONTEXT Previous research has focused on suicide among male prisoners and ex-prisoners, but little is known about risk in the wider offender population. OBJECTIVE To examine suicide risk over 3 decades among all people processed by a national criminal justice system. DESIGN Nested case-control study. SETTING The whole Danish population. PARTICIPANTS Interlinked national registers identi...

CONTEXT Under current federal law, many persons with prior convictions for misdemeanor offenses pass criminal records background checks and legally purchase handguns. OBJECTIVE To determine whether authorized handgun purchasers with prior misdemeanor convictions are more likely than those with no criminal history to be charged with new crimes, particularly offenses involving firearms and viol...

the principle of legality is a fundamental principle of criminal law within all statutory legal systems. the principle has been recognized in the iranian legal system which has been influenced by islamic law as well as french law especially since the beginning of the codification era. conversely, in english law which is mainly defined by common law, recently have been taken significant steps to...

Background: The legislative review of the criminal record on the crime of repetition and the severity of the punishment for repeated offenders indicates that the legislator firstly used various laws to include repetition of crime, and in some cases such as drug offenses and for criminal reasons. It has taken into account a certain degree of exacerbation that is markedly different from what is s...