Courses / Module

Basic economic tools of supply and demand, rationality and constrained optimisation will be used and developed as needed to provide insight into understanding the behaviour of criminals.
In addition, these economic tools will be essential in understanding the public policy choices faced by
lawmakers and policy-makers, such as the choice of where to place scarce resources to fight crime (community
policing, restorative justice, early intervention, drug treatment, more guards vs. more punishment, etc.).
We will pose many questions in this course, and outline how to approach the answers. The emphasis will not
be so much on answering all possible questions, but in learning some tools that can be applied to answer some
of these questions.
Understanding and preventing crime requires a multidisciplinary approach - in this course we are focusing
on developing the insights of economics. If you take other courses in human justice or elsewhere, hopefully
what you have learned in this class can help you understand various problems.