Scucca

Wilhite and Allen (2008, Crime, protection, and incarceration, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol 67, pp 481-494) summarise their paper with the following:

Criminals impose costs on society that go beyond the direct losses suffered by their victims; crime casts a shadow of uncertainty over our daily economic and social activities. Consequently, individuals and society as a whole choose to direct resources to crime prevention. In this study we analyze a virtual society facing such choices. Individuals, neighborhoods, and cities make crime prevention decisions and adjust their decisions over time as they attempt to balance the cost of crime with the cost of fighting it. The society that ultimately emerges exhibits aggregate criminal characteristics that mimic patterns of crime observable in the natural world. We then use this virtual society to conduct a series of anti-crime policy experiments, the results of which illustrate how different approaches to crime protection and incarceration can vary in their efficiency at reducing crime. As expected, more effective anti-crime measures tend to reduce crime, but the impact of prison is less clear. The model suggests that throwing more criminals into prison may reduce crime in the short run but may actually increase it in the long run.

Have the incarceration policies adopted in countries such as Britain and the US been irrational?

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P/N

So we shouldn't punish the criminals? We should just let them go free? Is that what you're saying here?

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"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." - Ronald Reagan

Scucca

There is policy choice available, as shown by the cross-country differences in the size of the prison population. Has the use of prison sentence been overly employed, given the suggestion that it may have damaging long run effects (compared to other expenditures on the criminal justice system)

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IMO, the prison system is too easy. When convicted felons have things like cable TV, the internet, personal websites, etc, they aren't being punished. Most prisons are far too lax. In certain parts of the country, life in prison is better than life on the street, so this isn't much of a deterrent at all. Punishment like chain gangs for example aren't acceptable with the liberal mindset, but PC use and marrying some bimbo who has a fascination with criminals is acceptable.

I don't believe it is a matter of the prison system being over employed so much as the system falling far short of it's purpose, which is to punish and rehabilitate, not have a better life inside the prison walls.

Scucca

I don't find your argument particularly convincing. You'd have to suggest that somehow the US stands out in terms of the ease of prison life. I doubt you will be able to achieve that.

The authors conclusions are useful:

Levitt (2004) pointed out that three-strikes legislation would ultimately become efficient as means of crime reduction only if “deterrence rather than incapacitation” mattered most in reducing societal crime. The evidence from California appears to suggest the opposite. In general, filling up prisons may reduce crime, but that reduction may depend on a continually increasing prison population. If true at a broader, societal level, this suggests that imprisonment cannot be a long-term solution to crime.

We have to consider something a tad more obvious: the conservatism in British/US policy, with politicians findings it convenient to use the prison system to kid the voter that they are "tough on crime and tough on the sources of crime", has led to policy error