Overview
Yundong Luo is a PhD student in Economics at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. He is currently the chair of SSP meeting in business school, one of the student representatives in his subject, teaching assistant of multiple modules and is also recognised as an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Yundong Luo is interested in Microeconomics, and mostly interested in Crime Economics. He is currently working on "investigating the consequence of Magistrates' court closures in England and Wales"
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Research
Research interests
- Crime Economics
- Behaviour Economics
- Microeconomics
- Labour Economics
- Game Theory
Thesis
investigating the consequence of Magistrates' court closures in England and Wales
As one of the fundamental departments of justice system, court department directly judges whether the behaviours of defendants should be punished according to the law. The courts' performance plays an essential role in maintaining justice and translating the legal value to the public. In England and Wales, being heard in a Magistrates' court is a compulsory process for each criminal case. These criminal cases would be either completed entirely in a Magistrates' court or be passed to a Crown court if the committed offences are serious (e.g. murder, robbery etc.). However, due to the budget deficit after 2008, around 165 out of 321 Magistrates' courts have been permanently closed until 31/03/2021. Since there is few empirical evidence discussing the consequences of the dramatically large court closures, this thesis applies quantitative approaches to answer the three questions:
a. Did the closures lead to increase in theft crime?
The large closures of Magistrates' courts may delay the court decision due to the decrease in court capacity. According to Becker's (1968) Rational Theory (one of the crime theories), the potential offenders are likely to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before committing crimes (especially for theft crimes as they could be easily measured by monetary units). The delay in court decisions could act as a time discount factor for the expected cost from offences, which motivates more theft crimes.
b. Did the closures lead to delay in court decision?
According to relevant court productivity theories, the decrease in the court capacity is likely to delay the court decision.
c. Did the closures lead to decrease in case sentence rate?
The case sentence rate refers to the probability of being punished and is positively related to expected cost from offences. According to relevant court theories, decrease in court capacity may reduce court productivity in resolving cases.
If the answers of all three questions are positive and consistent, one of the conclusions is that the Magistrates' court closures can lead to increase in theft crime possibly through channels including delay in court decision and decrease in sentence rate.
