Abstract
Crime and recidivism impose large and preventable costs on the society. To test current major theories of causes of criminal behavior in a unified framework, we carried out a unique data collection of prison inmates' and college students' knowledge, perceptions, and preferences related to Becker's theory of a rational criminal, counter-culture identity formation, procedural justice, excessive risk-taking, and optimism bias.
Our results show that inmates and students differ in almost all dimensions studied. We find that inmates as compared to students a) view the parameters of the criminal justice system as more strict; b) are more generous with other people; c) trust others less; d) declared lower trust in public institutions, especially towards the criminal justice system; e) are more risk averse; f) are more optimistic about position of just released inmates in society.