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Comment on Durlauf and Nagin
Author(s) -
Wilson James Q.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
criminology and public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.6
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1745-9133
pISSN - 1538-6473
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-9133.2010.00691.x
Subject(s) - citation , sociology , law , political science
At one time, students of crime were roughly divided into two camps: those who believed that a good criminal justice system would keep as many people as possible out of prison (whatever the effects on the crime rate) and those who argued that reducing the crime rate through imprisonment was essential (whatever the effects on the prison population). Today, however, a growing number of scholars argue that we can simultaneously cut both the crime rate and the prison population. In his recent book, Mark Kleiman (2009) argued that we can have both less crime and less punishment. And now we have this excellent paper by two of the best economists who study crime, Steven N. Durlauf and Daniel S. Nagin (2011, this issue), who show that we can cut crime by increasing the certainty while lowering the severity of punishment. They direct our attention to studies that suggest that increasing the likelihood of a police arrest (or at least the extent of police surveillance) can reduce crime. More can be gained by this strategy than by making marginal increases in the length of time an offender spends in prison. One reason for the minor gains from increasing sentence length is that American prison terms are already long; converting a 10-year term into 15 years may have little effect on whether the prospect of going to prison deters more would-be offenders. A good deal of evidence suggests that certain police tactics reduce crime rates beyond what would happen if the officers responded only to 911 calls. One is hot-spots policing where officers are heavily represented in the small fraction of addresses where crimes have frequently occurred, whereas another is problem-oriented policing in which the police focus on specific transactions (such as open-air drug markets or pupils being assaulted while going to and from school). Durlauf and Nagin (2011) wisely note that strategies for increasing the certainty of arrest vary in their effects across cities, and so they urge scholars to investigate why they work in some places and less in others.