Reconsidering Incarceration

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New Directions for Reducing Crime

Current research on the relationship between incarceration and crime provides confusing and even contradictory guidance for policymakers. The most sophisticated analyses generally agree that increased incarceration rates have some effect on reducing crime, but the scope of that impact is limited: a 10 percent increase in incarceration is associated with a 2 to 4 percent drop in crime. Moreover, analysts are nearly unanimous in their conclusion that continued growth in incarceration will prevent considerably fewer, if any, crimes than past increases did and will cost taxpayers substantially more to achieve.

These outcomes raise the question of whether or not further increases in incarceration offer the most effective and efficient strategy for combating crime. Additional research examined in this report reveals several other variables that have also been shown to have a relationship with lower crime rates. An increase in the number of police per capita, a reduction in unemployment, and increases in real wage rates and education have all been shown to be associated with lower rates of crime.

Although these latter findings do not necessarily indicate a cause and effect relationship, they do sug- gest that policymakers with limited resources should weigh the modest benefits of more incarceration against potentially greater reductions in crime that might be realized from investing in other areas.