Information and policing

Abstract

Agents decide whether to commit a crime based on their private types, which capture their heterogeneous returns from a crime. The police have information about these types. The police search agents, without commitment, to detect crime subject to a search capacity constraint. The deterrent effect of policing is lost when the police have full information about agents' types. The crime-minimizing information structure prevents the police from identifying agents who face high returns from a crime, while still allowing them to adjust their search intensities based on the types of agents who face low returns from a crime. The result extends to the case in which the police endogenously choose search capacity at a cost.