In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J. A. Bayona, 2018), the volcano on Isla Nublar is about to erupt and wipe out the dinosaurs left behind after the fall of the park. The United States Senate decides not to intervene. Eli Mills manages the affairs of Benjamin Lockwood, the elderly partner of John Hammond who helped bring the dinosaurs back, and he presents himself to Claire Dearing and Owen Grady as the man who will save them: Lockwood’s fortune will fund a rescue and a sanctuary on another island. The rescue is real; the sanctuary is not. The mercenaries Mills has hired capture the animals and ship them to Lockwood’s estate in northern California, where, in the basement, the auctioneer Gunnar Eversoll sells them to wealthy bidders from around the world. The star lot is the Indoraptor, a hybrid weapon designed by Henry Wu. When Lockwood discovers the deception and orders Mills to stop, Mills smothers him with a pillow. During the chaos of the auction, he tries to flee with a fragment of Indominus rex bone that would allow more hybrids to be made; the Tyrannosaurus devours him and crushes the bone.
// The theoryCrime as an investment
In 1968 the economist Gary Becker, later a Nobel laureate, published “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach”, an article that changed the way economists and many criminologists think about offending. Becker proposed that criminals are not a special kind of person: they respond to incentives like everyone else. A person commits a crime if the expected utility it brings exceeds the utility of using that time and those resources for something legal. The calculation includes the gain, the probability of being caught, the severity of the punishment and the alternatives available. Isaac Ehrlich extended the model to the choice between legal and illegal activities. The policy conclusions are simple: raise the probability and cost of punishment, or improve the legal alternatives, and crime will fall. The model has been used to study everything from tax evasion to the illegal trade in wildlife, where the value of rare animals on the black market is one of the main drivers of trafficking.
The sums Mills made
Mills’s situation is almost a classroom exercise in Becker’s model. The gain: the last living dinosaurs, each one unique, and a hybrid weapon, sold to bidders with deep pockets. The probability of being caught: low, because the government has abandoned the animals, the island is about to vanish with any evidence, and the operation is disguised as a philanthropic rescue funded by a respected name. The punishment: uncertain, because the legal status of the animals is unclear and the buyers are spread across the world. The alternative: continuing as the salaried manager of an old man’s estate. When Lockwood threatens to report him, the calculation changes and Mills recalculates: removing Lockwood eliminates the main risk. In the logic of the model, the murder is not a moment of passion. It is cost reduction.
// The subjectThe manager who saw assets
Mills speaks the language of business throughout the film. Where Claire sees endangered animals and Owen sees Blue, the raptor he raised, Mills sees inventory, buyers and a market price. He manages Lockwood’s money, controls access to the old man, and keeps his granddaughter Maisie away from the truth. He also understands the value of reputation: the rescue is credible because it uses the Lockwood name and the good faith of activists. His betrayal of Lockwood is foreshadowed by his betrayal of everyone else. He recruits Claire and Owen to locate Blue, then his men abandon them on the island once they are no longer useful. Each person in his path is treated the same way: as an asset while useful, as a liability when not.
Eli Mills
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// The crackWhat the model cannot price
Becker’s model explains Mills’s behavior almost too well, and that is its limit. It takes his preferences for granted—money above loyalty, above the animals, above the life of the man who trusted him—and does not ask where they come from. Most people with Mills’s opportunity would not have smothered their employer; the model would say their “moral costs” were higher, which is true but circular. It also tends to ignore the demand side. The auction works because there are buyers, and the film shows them: wealthy, anonymous, coming from many countries, untroubled by buying a weapon made of flesh. Research on wildlife trafficking has found the same: reducing supply is not enough while there are people willing to pay.
The second crack concerns the state. Becker’s deterrence depends on the probability of being caught, and in Fallen Kingdom that probability is close to zero because the Senate has decided not to act. Mills does not exploit a weakness in the law so much as a deliberate absence of it. Mills chose to kill a man and sell living beings as weapons. But the model shows that his choice was made easier by a world that had already decided the animals did not matter, and that the market he served existed before him.
When abandonment creates a market
The pattern of Fallen Kingdom has real equivalents. When protected species lose protection, when conflict or disaster removes oversight, or when the rarity of an animal increases its price, illegal markets grow. The economic model of crime has been used to explain why: the gains go up and the probability of being caught goes down. It also points to the remedies: real enforcement, cooperation between countries and pressure on demand. The film ends with the dinosaurs released into the world because nobody can bring themselves to let them die and nobody can control them alive. The auction in the basement is the step before: the moment when abandonment becomes a business.
Three key ideas
- Becker’s economic model (1968) explains crime as a choice in which the expected gain, discounted by the probability and severity of punishment, exceeds the value of legal alternatives. Offenders are not different people; their costs and benefits are.
- Eli Mills uses a fake rescue funded by Benjamin Lockwood to capture the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar and sell them at a basement auction, with the Indoraptor as the star lot. When Lockwood finds out, Mills smothers him. He dies trying to escape with a fragment of Indominus bone.
- The crack: the model explains his calculation but takes his preferences for granted and ignores the buyers and the state’s decision not to act. Even so, Mills chose to kill and to sell living beings as weapons.
Sources · further reading
- Becker, G. S. (1968). “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach”. Journal of Political Economy, 76(2), 169-217.
- Ehrlich, I. (1973). “Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation”. Journal of Political Economy, 81(3), 521-565.
- Wyatt, T. (2013). Wildlife Trafficking: A Deconstruction of the Crime, the Victims and the Offenders. Palgrave Macmillan.
- Bayona, J. A. (dir.) (2018). Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Universal Pictures.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Eli Mills?
Eli Mills is a villain from Jurassic Park, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. The island was about to disappear under the lava, the Senate had decided to do nothing, and one man saw in that abandonment the business opportunity of a lifetime.
Why does Eli Mills become a villain?
Eli Mills and the economic model of crime: in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Benjamin Lockwood’s trusted aide organizes a rescue of dinosaurs in order to sell them to arms buyers in the basement of a mansion. Gary Becker explained crime as an investment with risk. Mills follows the sums to the end, and in those sums his employer is also a cost.
Which criminological theory explains Eli Mills?
Eli Mills's case is analysed through Economic model of crime. Gary Becker’s economic model of crime (1968) holds that a person offends when the expected utility of the crime—the gain, discounted by the probability and severity of punishment—exceeds that of spending the time on something else. Eli Mills is a textbook case: faced with animals nobody protects, a buyer willing to pay and an elderly employer in the way, he does the sums and they add up. The model explains his decision with uncomfortable precision, and shows what economics does not measure: that the cost column also contained a human life.
