March 26-27, 2010
All sessions will take place in room WB105
Contact: Joyce Holt

Just two decades ago, little data existed even on the most rudimentary aspects of the criminal process, such as the numbers and types of convictions each year. In our fragmented criminal system, no central data gathering was conducted between the thousands of independent federal, state and local jurisdictions. Criminal justice data collection is still far from what should be desired. However, increasingly useful data is collected concerning each stage of the criminal process ranging from initial police stops, interrogations, guilty pleas, convictions, sentencing decisions, post-conviction review, to subsequent exonerations. A new wave of legal scholarship constructs new data sets and conducts more refined and ambitious empirical analysis. Criminal law scholarship also increasingly examines from a theoretical perspective the complex incentives surrounding criminality, prosecutorial charging, conviction, and sentencing.

The 2010 Olin Conference at the University of Virginia School of Law examines this growing and productive intersection of law and economics and criminal law. Scholars from economics, law, and criminology will examine different aspects of the criminal process. Papers analyze problems ranging from litigation costs, sentencing accuracy, racial profiling, deterrence, wrongful convictions, and judicial behavior. Participants will discuss the presented papers and more generally will explore what can be learned from the latest theoretical and empirical work analyzing criminal law from a law and economics perspective.

PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE - All sessions take place in room WB105 at the Law School
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