Freedomnomics: Why The Free Market Works And Other Half-Baked Theories Don't - Plot & Excerpts
Part II Law Enforcement The nation’s prison population grew 2.6 percent last year, the largest increase since 1999, according to a study by the Justice Department. The jump came despite a small decline in serious crime in 2002. . . . Alfred Blumstein, a leading criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, said it was not illogical for the prison population to go up even when the crime rate goes down.... Professor Blumstein said...that it has become increasingly clear from statistical research that “there is no reason that the prison count and the crime rate have to be consistent.” The crime rate measures the amount of crime people are suffering from, he said, while the prison count is a measure of how severely society chooses to deal with crime, which varies from time to time [emphasis added]. —Fox Butterfield, New York Times79 Is it really surprising that the number of prisoners increased while crime rates fell?80 Apparently it is to those who disregard incentives, a group that includes many criminologists as well as writers for the New York Times.
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