Allocating Resources Among Prisons And Social Programs In The Battle Against Crime

Abstract

This article evaluates the cost and crime-reducing potential of prisons and social spending, setting forth the conditions under which a shift in resources from an expanding prison population into social spending would lead to a reduction in total crime. Preschool enrichment programs coupled with family intervention have generated impressive results in reducing crime in a number of different studies. Targeting of resources toward those children most at risk of criminal behavior is necessary to generate cost-effective crime reduction, but this may be difficult to achieve because of political or constitutional constraints. Given precise targeting, and if a broadly implemented preschool program (more enriched than the current Head Start program) could generate half the crime-reduction benefits achieved in the pilot studies, then cutting spending on prisons and using the savings to fund intensive preschool education would reduce crime. The elasticity of crime with respect to incarceration is taken to be .15.

Selectively Incapacitating Frequent Offenders: Costs and Benefits of Various Penal Scenarios

“…On the basis of our research results, which were mainly negative about the selective detention of frequent offenders, one may well wonder whether such a fundamental change to the Dutch criminal law system is actually opportune, and even whether this policy has any empirical legitimacy. It is possible and even likely that criminological research would point to other policy alternatives, primarily those that do find support in criminological research (Donohue III and Siegelman 1998), as a more obvious choice-for example, investing more in the socioeconomic functioning of prisoners by improving and expanding the probation and aftercare service.…”

“…Others have stressed the 'stochastic' selectiveness that is already built-in to the judicial system, predicting low yields of an additional focus on frequent offenders (Blumstein et al 1993;Canela-Cacho et al 1997). Finally, researchers have pointed to the rising prison costs (Donohue III and Siegelman 1998), wastage of prison capacity (Blumstein 2005), the costly care of the aging prison population (King and Mauer 2001;Shichor and Sechrest 1996;Walker 2001), possible problems in monitoring growing groups of inmates serving long-term sentences, and the growing number of appeals lodged by those offenders meeting the selective criteria that may result from selective policies (Austin and Irwin 2001;Cushman 1996;Flanagan et al 1998;Patch 1998).…”

“…The model further assumes that others-who would not otherwise have offended-do not replace the incarcerated offenders. Nor does it account for the possibility that offences committed in groups would still have taken place even if one group member was absent due to him or her being selectively incapacitated (Donohue III and Siegelman 1998;Mathiesen 1998;Zimring and Hawkins 1995), 3 leading to further overestimation of the policies final effects.…”

Estimating the Impact of the Death Penalty on Murder

“…These controls are particularly crucial, as it seems likely that jurisdictions that are "tough on 51 See Levitt (2002) and Donohue and Siegelman (1998) for discussions about the value of resources spent on hiring police, increasing incarceration, or other crime-fighting measures.…”

Criminality, Social Cohesion and Economic Performance

“…Recently, a number of authors have focused their attention on this important and often overlooked aspect of crime (Donohue and Siegelman 1998, Greenwood 1998, Wilson 1998and Witt and Witte 1998. According to them, the influx of women into the labour market (without a simultaneous fall of the male participation rate) bears the danger of declining family values associated with changing social norms, ineffective childhood socialisation, lowering social attachments and deteriorating parental supervision.…”