Crime and Punishment in Ottoman Times: Corruption and Fines Monetary ªnes Have Been Common Throughout History As an Instrument of Law Enforcement
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xliii:3 (Winter, 2013), 353–376. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTTOMAN TIMES Metin M. Coqgel, Boíaç Ergene, Haggay Etkes, Thomas J. Miceli Crime and Punishment in Ottoman Times: Corruption and Fines Monetary ªnes have been common throughout history as an instrument of law enforcement. For certain crimes, governments have often preferred them over im- prisonment or corporal punishment because they are less costly to implement, at least in principle, and because they can help to compensate victims or to repair social damage. Used alone or in combination with other punishments, ªnes have proved to be an effective deterrent to crime. Since Becker’s pioneering work about the economics of crime in 1968, a signiªcant literature about the theory and practice of levying ªnes to enforce the law has emerged.1 In practice, however, ªnes are subject to corruption. Govern- ments often pay agents, directly or indirectly, a share of the reve- nue from the ªnes that they collect. Although tying agents’ in- come to these ªnes may seem on the surface to be a legitimate source of motivation, it may also lead to extortion, bribery, or theft. Recent studies have identiªed the cost and consequences of rent seeking in law enforcement due to opportunistic behavior. Metin M. Coqgel is Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut. He is the author of “The Political Economy of Law and Economic Development in Islamic History,” in Jan Luiten van Zanden and Debin Ma (eds.), Law and Long-Term Economic Change (Stanford, 2011), 158–177; “Conversations between Anthropologists and Economists,” in Stephen Gudeman (ed.), Economic Persuasions (New York, 2009), 81–96.
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