You go First! Coordination Problems and the Standard of Proof in Inquisitorial Prosecution

Christmann, Robin and Kirstein, Roland (2020): You go First! Coordination Problems and the Standard of Proof in Inquisitorial Prosecution.

Abstract

The prosecution of criminals is costly, and subject to errors. In contrast to adversarial court procedures, the prosecutor is regarded as an impartial investigator and aide to the judge in inquisitorial justice systems. We show in a sequential prosecution game of a Bayesian court that a strategic interaction between these two benevolent enforcement agents exists where each player hopes to freeride on the other one´s investigative effort. This gives rise to inefficient equilibria with excessive operating and error costs. Moreover, we will demonstrate that our results are sensitive to the applied standard of proof and that, more disturbingly, the inefficient outcome becomes more probable when the conviction threshold is raised. Applying the concept of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, we analyze the impact of the standard of proof and other legal policy instruments on type I and type II errors and operating costs.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: criminal justice, reasonable doubt, litigation, court errors
• Subjects: K - Law and Economics > K1 - Basic Areas of Law > K14 - Criminal Law; K - Law and Economics > K4 - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior > K41 - Litigation Process

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