NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/sci/econ/8583

Text File | 1992-11-11 | 2.6 KB | 61 lines

Newsgroups: sci.econ
Path: sparky!uunet!gumby!destroyer!cs.ubc.ca!fs1.ee.ubc.ca!jmorriso
From: [e-mail] (John Paul Morrison)
Subject: Re: Incarceration and the macro-economy (was: I want a GERMAN standard of living)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: University of BC, Electrical Engineering
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 23:08:10 GMT
Lines: 50

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Cameron Laird) writes:
>
>One point that I've been mulling over lately is the extent
>to which US penologic practices depress productivity.  The
>crudest back-of-a-small-envelope scratchings suggest to me
>the secular trend which has given the US world leadership
>in imprisoning its own population has lowered economic
>productivity growth by about %0.1 / year.  My crude model
>assigns a null output to those in jail, and uses rough,
>rough estimates for the costs to maintain them there.  I
>take no account of demographics.

But have you factored in positives of putting people in prison?
Couldn't putting people (who deserve to be there!!) in prison
contribute to economic productivity?

Your model assigns null output to people in jail, but does it
assign negative output those people if they'd been let out
(assuming that they repeat their offenses). Theft and fraud are
probably easier to estimate economically. Rape, murder, child abuse, assault
all diminish the productivity of the victims, both short term
while they are recovering from violent crime; and long term,
if psychological effects distress them for years later.
But these effects are trickier to estimate.

>
>I write "has lowered" in the sense of statistical regres-
>sion, rather than public policy.  At this point, I'm not
>arguing that we can gauge alternative trajectories re-
>alistically, only that estimating magnitudes might be
>instructive.
>
indeed. There are a lot of alternatives to consider, from preventing
crim with social and education spending, to cheaper rehab techniques
that reduce repeat offenders etc.

>--
>
>Cameron Laird
>[e-mail] ([e-mail])    [phone]
>[e-mail] ([e-mail])      [phone]


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 John Paul Morrison                     |
 University of British Columbia, Canada |
 Electrical Engineering                 |   .sig file without a cause
 [e-mail]              VE7JPM |
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