Social Stigma, Heuristics and Criminal Law

Abstract: This paper explores under what conditions social stigma exists as an additional sanction in criminal law. A distinction is made between the court as an institution specialized at discovering and assigning blame and the rest of the society that relies on judgment heuristics in assigning the informal sanction. It is shown that a criminal conviction carries an additional social stigma depending on the legal standard, the population variance, and the beliefs of the society. The substitutability between the fine and the probability of conviction also depends on the variance which is different from what the Becker model predicts.