Economics and Crime

Catalog description

The underground economy, which includes markets involving illegal activities, is estimated to involve over $2.5 trillion worth of transactions. Cybercrime alone was estimated to have cost the United States over $452 billion in 2021. Additionally, the amount of money spent to combat crime is also high--over $274 billion a year; and the top two private prisons in the country earned $1.1 million in 2021, with the shares of one company trading as high as $36 per share in 2024. These statistics indicate that money and economics are a big part of the criminal justice realm. This course examines ways that knowledge of some basic economic concepts can help society better understand a variety of crime-related issues, while also exploring ways that history, politics and social norms often determine what activities or trades people may legally engage in. The connection between economic factors, politics, technology and values in determining how "lawbreakers" are punished is also analyzed. Readings may include texts such as Code of the Suburb: Inside the world of young,middle class drug dealers; Sudhir Venkatesh's Off the Books; Peter Hecht's WeedLand, Douglas Walker's Economics of Casino Gambling; Adelstein's The Devil Takes Bitcoin; Selman and Leighton's Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business and the Incarceration Binge; and Frontline's "To Catch a trader" expose about insider trading on Wall Street.