Third party punishment and criminal behavior: an experiment with the Italian Camorra prison inmates

In this paper, we report the results of two experiments, each comprising two designs (a prisoner dilemma and a third party punishment; Fehr et al. 2004). The experiments were conducted with a sample of university students and a sample of Camorra prison inmates, both coming from the same Italian region. Our research hypothesis is that there are consistent differences in cooperative and sanctioning behavior between the two samples. The presence of these differences would justify the claim that economic analyses of crime must be integrated with a behavioral perspective. The results of the experiments fully support our research hypothesis, as Camorra inmates exhibit higher propensity to cooperate and to punish defecting behavior.