Prisoner’s Dilemma: The Matt and Sweat Case
This past June, the nation tuned in as two convicted murderers, Richard Matt and David Sweat, executed an elaborate escape plan from a maximum-security New York prison, spearheading a three-week manhunt that drew comparisons to the well-known blockbuster, The Shawshank Redemption. During this crisis, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo offered a $100,000 reward for finding both convicts or $50,000 for finding one of them. While the reward system offers a practical solution, Eric Chemi, in his article detailing the Matt and Sweat situation, raises an interesting economics question: Disregarding legal reasons, what if one convict turned the other in?
Chemi introduced the criminal case with a generalized version of the game theory concept we discussed in class called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Given that Matt and Sweat do not communicate with each other about their decisions, the assumed results are shown in the diagram below. In this instance, suppose that both prisoners prefer freedom over $50,000.
As seen in the table above, regardless of what the other prisoner decides, each prisoner, when acting in his own self interest, benefits more from turning the other prisoner in. This scenario represents a classic case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma; turning in the other convict is a dominant strategy, so both prisoners eventually choose to turn the other one in. Chemi takes this representation even further by considering two possible variables: both are caught anyways (both get $0 and no freedom) or one turns both of them in (he gets $100,000 but no freedom). Of course, these additional conditions add a new layer of complexity that makes it difficult to simply generalize the case using Prisoner’s Dilemma. However, as the best outcome is blurred by each prisoner’s individual priorities, it becomes increasingly important to consider the role of payoffs in game theory. For instance, if the prospect of being caught is very high, then the payoff of turning the other person in also increases.
Overall, the Prisoner’s Dilemma serves as a good basic representation of many common and practical circumstances in our daily lives. In the real-life finale of this publicized case, with Matt killed and Sweat imprisoned with serious wounds, it would have been in their best interest to turn themselves in. But then again, the whole point of their escape was to defy the odds.
Article Link: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/10/for-these-new-york-fugitives-an-economics-question.html