Allocating Resources among Prisons and Social Crime Prevention Programs: A New Look at the Evidence

• In Event: Crime Prevention for Social Impact and Social Justice I

Abstract

The aggregate social costs of crime victimization are enormous, and every affluent society will expend considerable resources to reduce these costs. The last two decades have produced additional research on the varying approaches to crime reduction, and this paper evaluates this empirical research to explore whether the United States is achieving the appropriate allocation of resources to punitive measures, such as incarceration and increased policing, versus social programs. One conceptual issue that has divided some researchers is whether to count the costs imposed on those who are incarcerated as a social cost or a social benefit. We argue that it should count as a cost: if, for example, expenditures on school enrichment would be equally costly to taxpayers and equally effective in reducing crime, the added social cost of the more punitive approach should be considered—and in this scenario would advantage the more humane expenditures on school enrichment. Politically, of course, expenditures today on school enrichment have the large disadvantage that they will only bear fruit years down the road as the recipients age into the high-crime years. The growing problem of proliferating guns and drug abuse further complicate the efforts to the goal of crime reduction.

Authors

• John J. Donohue, Stanford University Law School / National Bureau of Economic Research

• Peter Siegelman, University of Connecticut School of Law