Originally Posted By: Sini

You can believe what you want. The difference between you and me is that you prefer believes and I prefer facts.

http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=john_donohue [pdf]


I will hold your hand while we read one of the papers I linked together.

Title: "Allocating Resources Among Prisons and Social Programs in the Battle Against Crime."

Published in 1998, so not too long ago that you can claim drastic social changes made it irrelevant. Published in "The Journal of Legal Studies" from University of Chicago Law School. ResearchGate tells us the journals impact factor is 1.35, this is low enough that you can question its peer-review process, but this journal is legitimate publication avenue. Authors of this paper are from Stanford Law and Yale Law, so as ivory as it gets. These people clearly would have a reputation to protect.

Abstract says:

Quote:
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.


On incarceration the article says:

Quote:
Today, the prison population is well over 1 million. This level of incarceration is unprecedented in this country's history and throughout the world today.

Since 1974, however, the incarceration rate has risen dramatically, with no evidence of any slowdown. The current rate of growth requires the equivalent of almost two new 1,000-inmate prisons to open every week.


Very damning. We have incarceration problem in USA, and it is getting worse. Too many people in prisons. US population is ether bloodthirsty savages and scoundrels when compared to the rest of the world, or we have too many people incarcerated that don't belong in jail.

The article on costs of incarceration:

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...these studies have estimated the annual cost of locking up an inmate (in 1993 dollars) to be $25,000 $32,000 and $45,000.


That is 1993 dollars, so you have to adjust for inflation to get 2013 number. So it costs more today. $30K in 1993 would be equal to $45K today adjusted for inflation.

Then the paper goes on to talk about lost of wages, cost on family, impact on productivity after release and so on. They don't attach solid number on this, but we can easily conclude that whatever this number is, it will adjust $45K cost upward.

Interesting bit:

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The successful experimental programs produced lasting gains in socialization (for example, getting along with classmates, fighting), school functioning (attendance, need for special education, repeating a year of school), self-esteem, and family functioning. Unfortunately, they did not seem to produce lasting improvements in IQ or other measures of cognitive functioning.


They didn't because a lot of it is genetics. So is violent tendencies. Apparently so is tendency to become conservative at some point in life, but if you ask me that is more likely a result of a brain infection. One day we might even develop a vaccine.

Lots of other interesting stuff in the paper, but lets skip to the conclusion:

Quote:
Rather, our point is simply that there may be scope for welfare-increasing large-scale interventions and that society should begin the process of trying to see whether such interventions can actually be carried out on a meaningful scale, rather than unthinkingly committing itself to a policy of massive prison construction without a full awareness of all
of its attendant financial and human costs.


So conclusions says that based on small scale social programs, we can reduce criminality and incarceration. If programs scale, we will have huge social benefit and cost savings. If they don't scale, then we will still can come out ahead because how damn expensive it is to incarcerate so many people at ever-increasing rate. I mean, Stalin with Gulags had nothing on US penal system.

Here you go.

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