Like Ken Parish, I was struck by the good sense of Adele Horin’s piece on crime. As far as I can see, there’s very little evidence that prison sentences have much effect in either deterring crime or rehabilitating criminals. On the other hand, for hardened criminals, there’s a positive benefit to society from incapacitation alone – that is, the fact that while they are locked up, criminals can’t do much in the way of crime. The typical calculation, reproduced here, is that it costs $25 000/ year to lock up a criminal, but the social damage prevented is much greater. (This argument doesn’t apply to some sorts of crime, such as drug-dealing. The problem here is that, to the extent that drug dealers are removed from the trade, normal market processes will raise returns to drugdealing and attract new entrants.)
If this is right, then, once we reach the conclusion that someone is a professional criminal, the best thing to do is to lock them up until they’re too old for crime. But if we assume that this means 40 years or so behind bars, the cost is $1 million apiece.
If this reasoning is anywhere near right, the argument about being “tough on the causes of crime”, gains an incredible amount of force. For each kid we manage to save from becoming a career criminal, society is better off by $1 million (and that’s for the ones we catch – successful criminals are even more costly). We could pay for an awful lot of bleeding heart social programs with that kind of money. And, given that most juvenile institutions appear to be training grounds for adult criminals, there’s a strong case for second chances and slaps on the wrist for young offenders, based on the observation that a lot of them grow out of it naturally.