The Law And Economic Analysis Of Entrapment In Law Enforcement

Lawmen play an essential role on defending law and against criminal as a direct executor of law. Logically, they are allowed actively to prevent criminal behaviors only when there is actual fact or inexorable trend of criminal happening. However, in reality exists a phenomenon called "entrapment" in law enforcement, in which lawmen set up innocent people without criminal behaviors being carried out to temp them against law and afterwards accuse them of what they just have done.Laws in most countries rule that any illegal behavior tempted by law enforcement not to be punished because law enforcement like this could arouse seriously moral crisis and is unjust itself. It’s believed that to allow this kind of entrapment in law enforcement can thrill corruption in the justice departments whose action should be according to law codes and actual fact already taking out. Nonetheless, economics mind argues that every rational behavior is based on interest or utility motive. Lawmen could have additional law-executive demand if they can benefit from law enforcement beyond its cost. This additional demand,beside the high difficulty in obtaining evidence in some particular cases, also can lead to lawmen’s setups of entrapments as a law enforcement mode.This paper will study and analyze the reason,course and the social efficiency of entrapment in law enforcement, trying to explain the respective economic motives of hinter, bait and the hooked beside the social welfare influenced, and eventually according to the study conclusion, take out the improved proposal on legislation and policy. Three aspects will be considered in extensiveness——they are the social efficiency of entrapments, the choosing motives of rational parties who seek maximal utility in this game, and the social welfare influenced by the externality of this phenomenon.The following they are.Part1will be involved with some real cases and relevant phenomena about entrapment in law enforcement to make a clear explanation on its general feature and running course by describing their facts. Then we will try to figure out the common and the particular aspects among these cases such as wether there is independent bait, wether the hooked have the initial desire of injuria, the hinter’s purpose of lawmen. While analyzing out these manipulating method, motive and gaming situation in every gaming party, we would introduce juristic comments about this cases and distinguish it with general blackmail and extortion.The common truths and their courses of these cases would be modeled in part2which will explain the3parties about their motives, utilities they would have in the scope of economics. Their impulse could be from high difficulty in evidence gathering to just money itself gained from this kind of law enforcement. The hooked possibly bite the hook because it can provide some convenience or just their some demands. To use economic model, the social efficiency and its welfare can also be formulated to a conclusion that entrapment is inefficient if the hooked is not harmful to the society as in most possible situation, and it just hurts the interest of the hooked, does’nt increase the actual social welfare.Part3can be taken as the extended or specific one of part2. In this part, the established model will adjust its parameters to meet the specific situations and features. Depends on these change, we could say entrapment can be efficient and reasonable under some circumstance that the hooked commit crimes dangerous to the society, which can be concluded his or her at-large is high-cost for the society.Besides, this part will also concern some phenomena somehow like entrapments in law enforcement.The last part of this paper is about giving some proposals to this problem in the law enforcement system on the ground of the former analysis, then make some improvement to the system according back to the model. Despite that entrapment can be efficient on certain condition, it’s still an enforcement action against the morality and the justice. How to improve the justice system should be considered in the both way.This paper’s innovation shows in2points. One is the choice of the issue whose uniqueness is between the immorality of entrapment and its efficiency on some conditions. The other is the economic scope to this issue which is different with ordinary juristic papers.