Expected Punishment

Expected Punishment for Burglary.

• For every 100 burglaries committed, about 50 will be reported to the police.
• FBI data show that about 13 percent of reported burglaries will be cleared by arrest, or about 6.5 burglaries out of the 50 reported.
• The 1990 data on tracking offenders [see Table II] shows that about nine out of every 10 arrests for burglary will be prosecuted, or 5.9 out of 6.5.
• Just over half of the 5.9 prosecutions will result in felony convictions, or 3.1 felony convictions out of 100 burglaries.
• Of these convictions, 1.3 felons will be sent to prison while the remaining 1.8 will receive probation, fines or jail time.

Thus, the overall probability of doing any prison time for committing a burglary is only 1.3 percent [Figure II](10k). (Since only about half of all burglaries are reported to the police, the odds of going to prison once a burglary is reported rises to 2.6 percent, as shown in Table II.)(9k)

Once in prison, a burglar will stay there for a median sentence of about 15 months. But since only 1.3 of 100 burglaries result in prison time, the median prison term per act of burglary (both reported and unreported) is only six days (1.3% x 15 months x 30 days per month). While this may seem like a short time, it is a sharp increase over the expected punishment of 4.8 days in 1990.16

On average then, a potential criminal can expect to spend only six days in prison for an act of burglary. This expectation of prison time per crime is, of course, heavily influenced by the chances of getting away with it. What a rational, risk-neutral criminal would consider is this: burglary is profitable so long as what is stolen is worth more than six days behind bars.

"Burglary is profitable if what is stolen is worth more than six days behind bars."

Expected Punishment for Index Crimes.

Expected punishment for five serious crimes for selected years is shown in Table IV. (5k)17 In 1950, expected punishment for murder was 2.3 years. This had dropped to 1.1 years by 1970, but recovered to 2.1 years by 1992. Capital punishment was a more serious concern for murderers in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when more than 100 prisoners per year were executed after relatively short stays on death row. This compares to only 20 executions per year in the early 1990s after average death row stays of 10 years.

Rape also displays a U-shaped pattern in expected punishment, although it increased between 1950 and 1960. Of course, rapists also faced significant odds of receiving the death penalty years ago. The other crimes show U shapes too, although recent increases in expected punishments have been smaller.

Table V (17k) shows the probability of prison time and median months served for the five serious crimes combined. The probability of prison declined steeply between 1950 and 1970 and then slowly recovered, yet it remains less than half that of 1950. Median months served have recovered to more than two years but fall short of the 32 months served in 1950. Expected punishment has recovered to more than half of what it was in 1960 (17 days versus 29 days).