When the White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) speaks, the world listens.

And, indeed, when the CEA issued Economic Perspectives on Incarceration and the Criminal Justice System, it was a very big deal.

What was unusual was that the Report did not just report the costs and benefits of incarceration, but rather looked into other ways of reducing crime and concluded, with numbers, that a wide variety of of interventions would be far more cost effective.  Interestingly the Report concluded that the most cost-effective intervention of all was increasing policing.  It found that it is not necessary for those caught up in the policing to receive harsh penalties. Continue Reading