On the sanctioning of economic crime in Denmark

This article written for a symposium on comparative criminal lawdiscusses whether sanctions for economic crime have become excessive in the Danish context either in absolute terms or in comparison with sanctions for crimes involving physical harm. The text has three parts. In the first part, I present a theoretical framework that allows for a determination of optimal levels of sanctions and enforcement of crime. In the second part, I compare actual levels of sanctions in Denmark for various kinds of crime involving either economic or bodily harm, and discuss whether differences can be explained by the theory. In the third part, I compare a recent increase in the level of the sanction for breach of competition law and for insider trading with the theoretically optimal levels and I tentatively suggest that the increase may well have been warranted from a deterrence perspective. However, I stress that higher sanctions call for greater competence on the part of administrative agencies and courts due to the 'grey area' nature of some offenses within the two categories of regulatory crime.