March, 2009

A Few Unanswered Points

Prison isn’t cheap, but the alternative of not having it is much more expensive. Western’s argument is that crime is high despite the level punishment and so obviously prison doesn’t matter. What he doesn’t seem to acknowledge is that things can be much worse. A city with a murder rate of 25 per 100,000 people [...]

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Let’s Think Through Our Values First

by Glenn Loury
The Conversation
March 31st, 2009

It’s not — as Prof. Wilson suggests — that I want to avoid an objective discussion of policy and only bandy about my subjective views concerning values. Rather, it’s that I think the values discussion is a necessary condition for a defensible policy discourse. We have to argue over what we’re trying to achieve before [...]

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Retribution’s Legitimacy

by James Q. Wilson
The Conversation
March 30th, 2009

Bruce Western somehow manage to transpose my factual statements into political slogans with which he disagrees. I said prison deters. It does: see the research work of Daniel Nagin, Steven Levitt, and many others. He denies this (for reasons he does not explain) but then adds that the certainty of punishment deters crime. But the [...]

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Deterrence and Values

by Bruce Western
The Conversation
March 27th, 2009

Two points for Lott. First, he writes that “locking up people in prison might be a very important way of deterring those who have nothing else to lose.” How much deterrence does he see among the young African American dropouts, 60 percent of whom are going to prison, and many more are spending time in [...]

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For Lower-Income Criminals, Prison Deters Better than Reputation Loss

Western notes that “Research also shows that people are deterred by the stigma of a criminal record. When severe punishment becomes commonplace, stigma, and its deterrent effect, are diluted.” However, Western doesn’t seem to understand how these penalties work. The problem is that reputational penalties are much less important for those who have less to [...]

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Deterrence and Retribution

by Bruce Western
The Conversation
March 26th, 2009

Wilson argues that prison has a large deterrent effect on crime. I disagree. People are deterred from crime by the certainty and severity of punishment. Research reviewed by Dan Nagin (JSTOR subscription required) shows that the certainty of punishment deters more than the severity. People refrain from crime more out of a fear of getting [...]

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Punishment versus Probation

by James Q. Wilson
The Conversation
March 25th, 2009

Western and I agree that post-prison employment programs have only a small effect on recidivism, but he defends them by saying that prison also has only a modest effect on recidivism. He is correct, but he neglects the deterrent effect of prison and, in my view, exaggerates the incapacitative effect of intensive probation. Estimating the [...]

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From Prison to Work

by Bruce Western
The Conversation
March 25th, 2009

James Q. Wilson has remarked several times in this symposium that programs for prisoners will have only small effects, and we are better off supporting programs for young children. The implication is that we should divert some spending from prisons to early-child programs. Some early child programs have shown impressive long-term results, but I think [...]

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