Criminal Decision-Making from the Perspective of Behavioral Economics and its Implications for Criminal Policy Making

Behavioral economics is a branch of economics that seeks to modify the hypotheses of neoclassical economics using the findings of other sciences, especially psychology. This article examines from the perspective of behavioral economics what factors can be effective in criminals' decision to commit a crime. To this end, some cognitive biases and exploratory rules, each of which is somehow related to gathering information to commit a crime and assessing the certainty and severity of punishments are explained and their implications for policy-making are noted.Of course, it should be noted that many of the issues that will be addressed have not been specifically tested in the decisions of criminals, but they are discoveries and cognitive biases that exist in general and among many human beings. Given that the application of findings obtained in a context other than the commission of a crime may have results that are not directly applicable in the context of the commission of the crime, it seems that conducting empirical research to assess these cases in the decision to commit a crime in particular can increase the accuracy of these findings. As will be stated in the article, sometimes due to the existence of some biases and exploratory rules, it is not possible to believe in the economic analysis of criminal behavior that increasing the severity and certainty of punishments reduces crime and sometimes other factors are needed to increase the severity and certainty of the punishments should be considered. It seems that considering these cases can help to increase the effectiveness of policies against crimes and be useful in explaining cases where policies against crimes have not been effective or less effective.