Good post, but a strange headline. The benefits of reducing crime is mainly less harm to victims and less cost to the public in behavioral changes to avoid crime. Sure it is also a good thing to reduce the ham done to convicted perpetrators, but surely that's a third order consideration.
It is often helpful to state and restate the obvious and underlying goal, as this article does, lest it become obscured, and people start to confuse means with ends, which leads to all kinds of cloudy thinking and bad policy.
Here, what should be obvious, but does seem to need regular repeating, is that the prime objective should be elimination of violent and other predatory crime -- building communities where people and their children can go about their lives without fearing, or even thinking about, being victimized by that kind of crime. Everyone should be able to agree on that, wherever else on the political spectrum they fall.
But nobody should get too emotionally attached, or opposed, to any particular means to that end, which is more of an empirical question. Policing and incarceration is only a means, not the end. It has a lot of flaws as a means to that end, but on the other so do all the other proposed means. But this seems like something that should be able to sorted out by well-meaning, empirically and civically minded people, as long as everyone stays on the same page about what the end goal is.
Another point worth mentioning, at least here in Philly, the crime figures after the 2020 protests are ridiculously undercounted. The murders are the only crime obviously rising so quickly because there is no denying them and they are easily tracked by the press.
A progressive friend of mine was disillusioned when he tried to inform PA DA Krasner personally of the sad state of affairs in Philly crime wise. Krasner of course is a one issue politician and as such has enormous blinders. The police answer fewer calls and take way longer. They are simply not recording (or maybe tinkering the data) but there is more violent crime in general. This is the sentiment of nearly everyone I know that lives in Center City - it has become less safe with muggings and so forth as well murder and gun crime.
Still WAY WAY better than the 90s and earlier tho.
I mean, this all seems correct to me, but the premise seems weird. Why do we need justification to convince us that reducing violence is a desirable good? Why even mention it will disproportionately help black Americans, or reduce incarceration? Shouldn’t reducing violent crime be an end of itself, if anything is? Again, while all the suggestions here are sensible, the framing seems to speak to a presumed “woke” audience whose worldview has gone totally bizarro so that it required this kind of roundabout apologetics to justify what ought to be totally obvious. Protecting the life, liberty and property of of the citizenry is the first duty of the modern state. Its raison d’être. The how is worth debating, saddens me that we should spend time now on the why.
As a longtime RBC reader I was very happy to read a Prof Humphreys post here! I seem to remember from that site that there was good criminological evidence that the key way punishment reduced drug crime was by being likely and rapid, rather than severe or brutal. Is this also true for violent crime?
Was recently with a group of friends, one of whom is a public defender near DC. He is a fierce advocate for appropriate administration of justice system-wide.
Asked his thoughts on reform, he suggested we first reduce prison terms, specifically by essentially eliminating incarceration past age 65. He noted brain psychology and low recidivism amongst older convicts, and the benefits of easing overcrowded facilities--a step toward rehabilitation vs warehousing.
It was a surprisingly incremental suggestion, but now that I think of it, one that fits well with the Slow Boring ethos--and the point of the article, which offers small examples of a holistic consideration of a societal issue.
I think when we talk about mass incarceration in the US I think we underrate being wealthy and able to afford it as a cause.
Poor countries with high violence obviously don’t have the state power or money for high incarceration rates, but incarceration is so expensive I think it’s costs put limits on how much even rich countries can incarcerate.
Some people talk about long American sentences as a cause for mass incarceration, pointing to obviously unjust ones but I don’t think, statistically, the non-violent drug offender serving 20 years is causing our incarceration rate. However, I have heard grumbling in European countries about short sentences for violent offenders--suggesting that short sentences are not universally supported in low-crime Europe. I suspect either extra money or a sudden spike in the crime rate would drive that tolerance down.
On a practical matter: in the US, any criminal reform has to deal with the fact that Americans are less constrained by money, and if enough want violent and sexual offenders locked up for 10+ years , violent and sexual offenders will be locked up for long enough to drive unusually high incarceration rates at current rates of violent crime.
Sorry, didn’t Matt just yesterday link to an Asher study that said the murder rate was back down in 2022? This piece seems to make a lot of assumptions. And why was the most recent (slight) peak in concern about crime in 2016? Wasn’t it at an historical low about then?
The time series graph hardly shows a robust relationship between violent crime and incarceration. A scatter plot of state violent crime and incarceration rates probably would have been better. Because of the war on drugs, incarceration rates continued climbing even after violent crime had fallen for a decade. A third of Americans who are behind bars are in jails, not prisons, often for things like driving without a license or failing a drug test while on probation. Far more people have been to jail than prison.
Now that fewer long sentences are for drugs, the correlation between violent crime and incarceration will almost certainly strengthen.
I realize this is a bit off-topic, but feel compelled to add that the main cause of crime is childhood trauma. Obviously, lower crime rates would contribute to a virtuous circle here, but teaching parents nonviolent methods of discipline, reducing poverty, and supporting employment policies that allow parents to be more involved with their children would also lead to better outcomes.
It seems like restricting access to guns for people under active domestic violence restraining orders would be a good idea, some states already do this but I don’t think all do. A man who beats his wife is just a coward and a terrorist, why give him a gun?
Yes indeed, BETTER policing is needed. REFORM the police, not defund the police was the appropriate protest mantra for the summer of 2020 but few wanted to listen to that at the time, sadly.
Too few want to pay for better policing or actually do better policing is the problem. Policing is hard and we have intractable problems as do all nations. Given that we’ve made it nearly impossible to regulate weapons of death while impossible to procure soothing substances not called alcohol legally, we’ve created a soulless meat grinder most would rather not consider, especially by those with the means and position to easily escape it. But if you were born into a ghetto without a father and with a mother working several jobs, with poor access to education, healthcare even food, our system is unfair, merciless and cruel. As I’m well aware, drugs and alcohol are used at levels among elites as they are among the poor, its just these are sorted out far differently in our society when they become problematic. Glamorous rehab facilities have sprouted about the same as our expanded prison system since the epically stupid War on Drugs began 50 years ago.
Everyone wants less violence except the goons that benefit from it. And absolutely right that increased violence necessarily leads to increased incarceration. One enormous problem we have is that culture of crime and stigma seems to spread in our prison system. So incarceration paradoxically can result in snowballing dysfunction despair and violence.
I don’t have the easy answers. Better policing today. But for tomorrow...Education is key, culture is key, mythology/religion is key. Society must evolve away from this stuff, it can only be guided with better regulation and better ideas.
Nice to see a shorter piece with a good deal of citations. Would be interested to see the policy prescriptions expanded upon and deal with the potential pushbacks.
One thing that always sticks out when people write about criminal justice reform lack of focus on gender. Men make up a huge majority of the incarcerated and there are sentencing disparities that sometimes exceed even the racial disparities. Police shooting deaths are about 95% male.
It might be difficult to predict the political usefulness of making criminal justice reform an issue that aims to help men but given the gender divide in the political parties it seems like there might be some ground to gain.
I'm in the middle of The New Jim Crow right now and I don't know how much has changed since the book has been written but this post doesn't seem to address the problems it has with mass incarceration.
First, the statistic that 58% of inmates have been convicted of violent crimes. It addresses this by pointing out that violent crimes get longer sentences, so that at any given point, the number of people in prison will be mostly violent offenders, but a big majority of the total people that spend some time in prison are non-violent.
Second, even though sentences tend to be shorter for non-violent offenders, the consequences of having a criminal record can include not being able to vote, not being able to get welfare benefits, jobs, etc.
I read through the linked CCJ report and it looks like disparity in drug arrests have dropped dramatically and imprisonment rate has dropped by 50% for African Americans in the last 20 years (which is great news!) but that's what's going to have an impact on Mass Incarceration, not the murder rate.
Of course, reducing violence and therefore violent crimes is a great goal and one that we've taken a step backwards on in the past couple years, but my point is that using statistics about murder rates, or the number of current inmates in for violent crimes is not addressing the problems that the term Mass Incarceration was coined to address.
Good post, but a strange headline. The benefits of reducing crime is mainly less harm to victims and less cost to the public in behavioral changes to avoid crime. Sure it is also a good thing to reduce the ham done to convicted perpetrators, but surely that's a third order consideration.
It is often helpful to state and restate the obvious and underlying goal, as this article does, lest it become obscured, and people start to confuse means with ends, which leads to all kinds of cloudy thinking and bad policy.
Here, what should be obvious, but does seem to need regular repeating, is that the prime objective should be elimination of violent and other predatory crime -- building communities where people and their children can go about their lives without fearing, or even thinking about, being victimized by that kind of crime. Everyone should be able to agree on that, wherever else on the political spectrum they fall.
But nobody should get too emotionally attached, or opposed, to any particular means to that end, which is more of an empirical question. Policing and incarceration is only a means, not the end. It has a lot of flaws as a means to that end, but on the other so do all the other proposed means. But this seems like something that should be able to sorted out by well-meaning, empirically and civically minded people, as long as everyone stays on the same page about what the end goal is.
Another point worth mentioning, at least here in Philly, the crime figures after the 2020 protests are ridiculously undercounted. The murders are the only crime obviously rising so quickly because there is no denying them and they are easily tracked by the press.
A progressive friend of mine was disillusioned when he tried to inform PA DA Krasner personally of the sad state of affairs in Philly crime wise. Krasner of course is a one issue politician and as such has enormous blinders. The police answer fewer calls and take way longer. They are simply not recording (or maybe tinkering the data) but there is more violent crime in general. This is the sentiment of nearly everyone I know that lives in Center City - it has become less safe with muggings and so forth as well murder and gun crime.
Still WAY WAY better than the 90s and earlier tho.
I mean, this all seems correct to me, but the premise seems weird. Why do we need justification to convince us that reducing violence is a desirable good? Why even mention it will disproportionately help black Americans, or reduce incarceration? Shouldn’t reducing violent crime be an end of itself, if anything is? Again, while all the suggestions here are sensible, the framing seems to speak to a presumed “woke” audience whose worldview has gone totally bizarro so that it required this kind of roundabout apologetics to justify what ought to be totally obvious. Protecting the life, liberty and property of of the citizenry is the first duty of the modern state. Its raison d’être. The how is worth debating, saddens me that we should spend time now on the why.
As a longtime RBC reader I was very happy to read a Prof Humphreys post here! I seem to remember from that site that there was good criminological evidence that the key way punishment reduced drug crime was by being likely and rapid, rather than severe or brutal. Is this also true for violent crime?
Was recently with a group of friends, one of whom is a public defender near DC. He is a fierce advocate for appropriate administration of justice system-wide.
Asked his thoughts on reform, he suggested we first reduce prison terms, specifically by essentially eliminating incarceration past age 65. He noted brain psychology and low recidivism amongst older convicts, and the benefits of easing overcrowded facilities--a step toward rehabilitation vs warehousing.
It was a surprisingly incremental suggestion, but now that I think of it, one that fits well with the Slow Boring ethos--and the point of the article, which offers small examples of a holistic consideration of a societal issue.
I think when we talk about mass incarceration in the US I think we underrate being wealthy and able to afford it as a cause.
Poor countries with high violence obviously don’t have the state power or money for high incarceration rates, but incarceration is so expensive I think it’s costs put limits on how much even rich countries can incarcerate.
Some people talk about long American sentences as a cause for mass incarceration, pointing to obviously unjust ones but I don’t think, statistically, the non-violent drug offender serving 20 years is causing our incarceration rate. However, I have heard grumbling in European countries about short sentences for violent offenders--suggesting that short sentences are not universally supported in low-crime Europe. I suspect either extra money or a sudden spike in the crime rate would drive that tolerance down.
On a practical matter: in the US, any criminal reform has to deal with the fact that Americans are less constrained by money, and if enough want violent and sexual offenders locked up for 10+ years , violent and sexual offenders will be locked up for long enough to drive unusually high incarceration rates at current rates of violent crime.
Sorry, didn’t Matt just yesterday link to an Asher study that said the murder rate was back down in 2022? This piece seems to make a lot of assumptions. And why was the most recent (slight) peak in concern about crime in 2016? Wasn’t it at an historical low about then?
The time series graph hardly shows a robust relationship between violent crime and incarceration. A scatter plot of state violent crime and incarceration rates probably would have been better. Because of the war on drugs, incarceration rates continued climbing even after violent crime had fallen for a decade. A third of Americans who are behind bars are in jails, not prisons, often for things like driving without a license or failing a drug test while on probation. Far more people have been to jail than prison.
Now that fewer long sentences are for drugs, the correlation between violent crime and incarceration will almost certainly strengthen.
I realize this is a bit off-topic, but feel compelled to add that the main cause of crime is childhood trauma. Obviously, lower crime rates would contribute to a virtuous circle here, but teaching parents nonviolent methods of discipline, reducing poverty, and supporting employment policies that allow parents to be more involved with their children would also lead to better outcomes.
It seems like restricting access to guns for people under active domestic violence restraining orders would be a good idea, some states already do this but I don’t think all do. A man who beats his wife is just a coward and a terrorist, why give him a gun?
Awesome piece.
Yes indeed, BETTER policing is needed. REFORM the police, not defund the police was the appropriate protest mantra for the summer of 2020 but few wanted to listen to that at the time, sadly.
Too few want to pay for better policing or actually do better policing is the problem. Policing is hard and we have intractable problems as do all nations. Given that we’ve made it nearly impossible to regulate weapons of death while impossible to procure soothing substances not called alcohol legally, we’ve created a soulless meat grinder most would rather not consider, especially by those with the means and position to easily escape it. But if you were born into a ghetto without a father and with a mother working several jobs, with poor access to education, healthcare even food, our system is unfair, merciless and cruel. As I’m well aware, drugs and alcohol are used at levels among elites as they are among the poor, its just these are sorted out far differently in our society when they become problematic. Glamorous rehab facilities have sprouted about the same as our expanded prison system since the epically stupid War on Drugs began 50 years ago.
Everyone wants less violence except the goons that benefit from it. And absolutely right that increased violence necessarily leads to increased incarceration. One enormous problem we have is that culture of crime and stigma seems to spread in our prison system. So incarceration paradoxically can result in snowballing dysfunction despair and violence.
I don’t have the easy answers. Better policing today. But for tomorrow...Education is key, culture is key, mythology/religion is key. Society must evolve away from this stuff, it can only be guided with better regulation and better ideas.
I have an observation on this that I am legally enjoined from expressing.
Is there any evidence that the opposite is true? Increasing incarceration decreases violent crime?
Nice to see a shorter piece with a good deal of citations. Would be interested to see the policy prescriptions expanded upon and deal with the potential pushbacks.
One thing that always sticks out when people write about criminal justice reform lack of focus on gender. Men make up a huge majority of the incarcerated and there are sentencing disparities that sometimes exceed even the racial disparities. Police shooting deaths are about 95% male.
It might be difficult to predict the political usefulness of making criminal justice reform an issue that aims to help men but given the gender divide in the political parties it seems like there might be some ground to gain.
A website that has been cited at least 3 times in this comment section is PrisonPolicy.org and their handling of the gender issues in prison strike me as particularly unhinged: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/expertise.html
I'm in the middle of The New Jim Crow right now and I don't know how much has changed since the book has been written but this post doesn't seem to address the problems it has with mass incarceration.
First, the statistic that 58% of inmates have been convicted of violent crimes. It addresses this by pointing out that violent crimes get longer sentences, so that at any given point, the number of people in prison will be mostly violent offenders, but a big majority of the total people that spend some time in prison are non-violent.
Second, even though sentences tend to be shorter for non-violent offenders, the consequences of having a criminal record can include not being able to vote, not being able to get welfare benefits, jobs, etc.
I read through the linked CCJ report and it looks like disparity in drug arrests have dropped dramatically and imprisonment rate has dropped by 50% for African Americans in the last 20 years (which is great news!) but that's what's going to have an impact on Mass Incarceration, not the murder rate.
Of course, reducing violence and therefore violent crimes is a great goal and one that we've taken a step backwards on in the past couple years, but my point is that using statistics about murder rates, or the number of current inmates in for violent crimes is not addressing the problems that the term Mass Incarceration was coined to address.