Criminal Thrill and Legislative Justification

Abstract

Based on the psychological need of humans to experience risk, this paper posits the existence of a pleasurable Criminal Thrill and explores the implications this has for the criminal justice system. If there is a psychological need pushing citizens towards breaking laws in part to experience the Criminal Thrill, the traditional method of legislative justification fails to utilize and manage such a need. This paper establishes an alternative method of legislative justification under the umbrella of libertarian paternalism which attempts to utilize the Criminal Thrill to better accomplish the goals of specific laws as well as the general goal of legislation itself. This alternative paradigm of legislative justification is held up to several possible tests of validity in an attempt to show that it can be used under current law as well as compared critically with the traditional method to discover which of the two is preferable to be used by the legislature. The new method is then compared with possible other methods to determine if there are better choices, and having passed these tests is recommended for further study and analysis.