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Modest reforms can reduce crime, whereas big bets often backfire.
If you catch a domestic terrorist or a deranged serial killer, the next steps are obvious enough. Lock him up for life. Maybe even consider the death penalty.
But as Jennifer Doleac — a prominent economist whose work focuses on crime — writes in The Science of Second Chances, “Most people who cycle through our criminal justice system are far more sad than scary.” Most criminal cases arise from minor offenses; even the felonies, meaning crimes punishable by a year or more in prison, are mostly nonviolent.
Much of the American justice system therefore revolves around lower-level offenders who might spend a little time behind bars now and then. We need to figure out what to do with people who break the law, often repeatedly, but will inevitably, and probably soon, reenter society. Doleac’s book serves as an excellent introduction to a growing body of research focused on exactly that.
Continue reading the entire piece here at National Review
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Robert VerBruggen is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
Photo by Cristoph Schone/Getty Images