The Solutions We Need

Mark Kleiman on the hugely successful HOPE crime control program:

Just to stress the key point in Keith's post on HOPE and related programs: not only do they reduce substance abuse and crime, they reduce incarceration. The more general point is that, compared to current practices, well-designed enforcement systems can bring about both less undesired behavior and less punishment.

I say that's the crucial point for two reasons, one ethical and one political. Ethically, keeping people out of prison is a demand progressives ought to unite behind, even when the mechanism that brings it about is coercive (threats of jail) rather than facilitative (offers of treatment). Politically, less incarceration means reduced cost: HOPE in Hawaii pays for itself about four times over. If you're a governor facing a fiscal crisis – which is to say, if you're a governor – doing community corrections right is, potentially, a source of substantial savings as well as a means of reducing substance abuse and crime.

The more you think about the bigger picture and the longer term in America, I think the larger this kind of problem looms. Americans households, despite current economic problems, have very high incomes by global or historical standards. But the USA is also a country where an awful lot of people are in prison and where an awful lot of people are victimized by violent crimes. Crime control reforms that tackle both issues simultaneously offer huge improvements in human welfare.