On the behavioral economics of crime

This paper examines the implications of the brain sciences’ mechanistic model of human
behavior for our understanding of crime. The rational crime model is replaced with a behavioral approach, which proposes a decision model comprising cognitive and emotional
decision systems. According to the behavioral approach, a criminal is not irrational but
rather ‘ecologically rational’, outfitted with evolutionarily conserved decision modules
adapted for survival in the human ancestral environment. Several important cognitive as
well as emotional factors for criminal behavior are discussed and formalized, using tax
evasion as running example. The behavioral crime model leads to new perspectives on
criminal policymaking.