Legal Commentary

I have a new paper, forthcoming in Wash U's Law Review next year, entitled Cooperation's Cost.   The paper got its first workshop start with a grilling from the gang at Prawfsfest! 6 at Southwestern, and then proceeded to a number of exciting and helpful venues, culminating with the Stanford/Yale Jr. Faculty Forum this June.  It won't come out until winter 2011, so I definitely look forward to comments and feedback.  Here's the SSRN link.  You can see the abstract after the jump:

This Article explores the costs and benefits of criminal cooperation, the widespread practice by which prosecutors offer criminal defendants reduced sentences in exchange for their assistance in apprehending other criminals.  On one hand, cooperation increases the likelihood that criminals will be detected and prosecuted successfully. This is the ?Detection Effect? of cooperation, and it has long been cited as the policy?s primary justification. 

On the other hand, cooperation also reduces the expected sanction for offenders who believe they can cooperate if caught.  This is the Sanction Effect of cooperation, and it may grow substantially if the government signs up too many cooperators, sentences them too generously, or causes them to become overly optimistic about their chances of receiving a cooperation agreement.    

When the government allows the Sanction Effect to grow too large, it undermines one of its key tools for improving deterrence.  Indeed, when the Sanction Effect outweighs the Detection Effect, cooperation reduces deterrence, and the government unwittingly encourages more crime.  Since cooperation is itself administratively costly, the policy perversely causes society to pay for additional crime. 

This Article reorients the cooperation debate around the fundamental question of whether cooperation deters wrongdoing.  Drawing on economics and behavioral psychology, it provides a framework for better understanding how and when cooperation ?works.?  Government actors who laud and rely on cooperation must address the fundamental question of whether it actually deters wrongdoing. To do otherwise, is to leave society vulnerable to cooperation?s greatest cost.