prior probability

In response to the criminalization of unauthorized street art, Cuban graffiti artist Yulier P. found this ingenious and defiant micro-street art solution:

The murals of Yulier Rodriguez Perez (@yuliergraffiticuba) began to appear on the streets of Havana in 2014. In the words of Deni Ellis Béchard, “He soon established himself as one of the most prolific street artists in Havana, signing his tableaus Yulier P. He often painted … on walls so deeply weathered that his images instantly resembled ancient frescoes. He wanted to remind the people who lived there that it was possible to have a voice and to express their struggles. ‘Cubans have been indoctrinated to fear speaking out. I don’t understand this, since this is a socialist project, created by the people.'” That was before the Cuban government decided to criminalize unauthorized street art …

Image credit: Yulier P

As if existing levels of repression and economic hardship were not enough, the Cuban government has now begun to criminalize street art under a recently-enacted dystopian decree. We will be blogging about the criminalization of Cuban street art in the next day or two.

Image credit: Yulier P.

Answer: When the probability of getting caught, let alone punished, is small. Consider violent crime, by way of example. Our friend and colleague Alex Tabarrok does the probabilistic math here: “In 2017 … victims reported 2,000,990 serious violent crimes [e.g. rape, robbery, or aggravated assault]. In the same year there were approximately 446,510 arrests for these crimes (crime definitions may not line up exactly). In other words, the chance of being arrested for a serious violent crime was only 22%. Data on convictions are harder to obtain but convictions are far fewer than arrests. In 2006 (most up-to-date data I could find but surely lower today) there were 175,500 convictions for serious violent crimes. Thus, considerably fewer than 10% of violent crimes result in a conviction (175,500/2,000,990 = 8.7%). Put differently, the expected time served for a serious violent crime is less than 14 months….”

There is only one item on our spring break reading list: David Foster Wallace‘s Infinite Jest. We picked up a paperback copy of this massive tome for $1 two Fridays ago at our university bookstore and finally cracked open DFW’s beautiful magnum opus. We’re already on page 367 and footnote 141 of this colossal monster of a novel, so we still have over 700 pages and 250 footnotes to go …