Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

Astral Codex Ten Podcast

Do longer prison sentences reduce crime?

It seems obvious that they should. Even if they don’t deter anyone, they at least keep criminals locked up where they can’t hurt law-abiding citizens. If, as the studies suggest, 1% of people commit 63% of the crime, locking up that 1% should dramatically decrease crime rates regardless of whether it scares anyone else. And blue state soft-on-crime policies have been followed by increasing theft and disorder.

On the other hand, people in the field keep saying there’s no relationship. For example, criminal justice nonprofit Vera Institute says that Research Shows That Long Prison Sentences Don’t Actually Improve Safety. And this seems to be a common position; William Chambliss, one of the nation’s top criminologists, said in 1999 that “virtually everyone who studies or works in the criminal justice system agrees that putting people in prison is costly and ineffective.”

This essay is an attempt to figure out what’s going on, who’s right, whether prison works, and whether other things work better/worse than prison.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prison-and-crime-much-more-than-you