Because it’s not about the $4, but about the loss of liberty. The cost of replacing your TV pales next to the mental cost of knowing your home was violated. Even if your monetary losses are completely covered by insurance, your new laptop will still take a boatload of time to set up properly, and it’s never going to be the same, and you probably lost important personal documents (not to mention somebody else has copies of your baby pictures).

And it’s disingenuous to list average property losses per month and what people are willing to pay per year. Why not take it another step and note that people would willingly pay $1000 per decade?

Restorative justice, properly done, can have exceedingly beneficial impacts on both victims and criminals. It helps criminals by forcing them to confront the impact their crimes had on other human beings. Only the true sociopaths are really able to remain unmoved and unchanged by being forced to look more closely at how their crimes made others suffer. They help victims by providing more closure; the victims learn from the criminal the answers to many of their “why” questions. Even if they don’t like the answers, they appreciate having them, in my experience. Directly confronting the criminal is also cathartic; it releases a great deal of pent-up tension. There is often a palpable sense of relief that one has stood up for oneself (or one’s loved one), and spoken the truth.

For example, suppose the local municipality proposes an extra 1% sales tax to fund an increase in the size of the police force, which would result in an additional $100 of sales tax from each individual making $10,000 in taxable purchases each year. Will all the people who answered the survey saying they would pay $100 per year or more vote “yes” on the tax? Of course not. Some will vote against because they simply lied in the survey. Others will vote no because, while they really meant it at the time they answered the survey, in reality they just aren’t that committed. Others still will vote against it because 1% on every single purchase is a significant amount, and seems likely, on a gut level, to lead to more than $100 per year.

And that’s before you get to the people who would vote yes if they thought that increasing the police force size would help, but simply disagree that it will result in a 10% reduction in crime. It is, after all, a speculative matter of prediction in any given case, no matter how statistically likely a proposal is to be successful. Some will be ideologically disposed against more cops, out of distrust or hostility to law enforcement generally. Others will be opposed to the current administration of the city.

Perhaps these “background” type of posts are necessary for people not familiar with the issues, but I look forward to posts addressing the real issue… what measures really are successful at reducing crime, how much do they cost, how repeatable are they, where does the money come from, how do we really know they are successful (rather than benefiting from, say, demographic changes over the time studie), etc., etc., etc.

But it’s not enough to say “we instituted this program and violent crime dropped 10% in this community”. You’d also need to account for the community next door, which didn’t institute the same program, yet crime also dropped 10% there as well (or 9% or 11%, or maybe only 5% or 15%…) As a society, we take many steps to attempt to reduce crime, and it can be difficult to establish which solution is having which effect. It’s not enough to show a correlation between a given social program and crime reduction, but you’d also need to demonstrate that, statistically speaking, it has that correlation independent of possible conflating factors (increases in incarceration, changes to the socioeconomic makeup of the area, the performance of the economy, etc.)

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, what social scientists, statisticians, and economists do. You can do it yourself at home, with enough data and the right software. I’ve done it myself, back in stat class.

Avatar: The real problem you have, though, is demonstrating that an “actual, practicable, scalable social program” has actually reduced crime. In an environment where there has been a significant general decrease in crime, how can you possibly control for the general reduction, in part attributable to precisely the practice you condemn (i.e. locking criminals up)? You would need extremely good evidence in order to make a convincing case.

Interestingly enough, statisticians, social scientists and economists have actually thought about this. If you intend to hold that standard, much of economics goes bye-bye.

In fact, most of life experience not involving controlled, randomized, replicated experiments with good covariate data collection goes bye-bye.

While most public housing organizations have that rule, it is also precedent in New York that parents are not assumed to be aware of their children’s drug use. I’ve lost the citation, but the case had 18 people living in a three bedroom apartment. The 52 year old great grandmother was not presumed to know about the daughter and granddaughter’s cocaine, and so she did not get evicted from the apartment.

RowerinVA: I criticized Mr. Kleinman’s last two posts but on this one, I’m mostly in agreement.Where I depart, or at least I believe I do based on this admittedly short piece, is this para:“Usual[ly] … entirely undeserved?” How does he reach that conclusion? Frequently, those with collateral suffering to some degree condoned, directly or indirectly benefitted, or failed to exercise their moral duty to prevent, the criminal behavior. Certainly this is the case in the great majority of pro bono clients I have seen with such problems. E.g., Mom happily spent Son’s drug money and provided him a “business” location. Her suffering at Son’s resulting incarceration is real, but people will differ over calling it “undeserved.”

Isn’t an example of this the policy that some public housing organizations have, of evicting the entire family when one family member is convicted of a crime like drug dealing? The idea is that somebody has to get some control, and they probably can if they have a strong enough motive to. Don’t know if this has been shown to work, or even if it’s still being done.

I disagree with, “By the same token, controlling crime by providing services, where it works, is greatly preferable to controlling crime by threatening or inflicting damage.”

You seem to be claiming “threatening or inflicting damage” is automatically trumped by “providing services”. I think you would need to perform a specific cost-benefit analysis to know that. (Unless by your phrase “where it works” you mean where a full cost benefit analysis demonstrates it is preferable to the “threatening or inflicting damage” approach. But if so you would be saying ‘it is preferable when it is preferable’.)

Consider a hypothetical:

Society A: No punishment
Annual Drunk driving reduction 0%
Annual Drunk Driving Deaths: 20,000

Socitey B: Free Taxi Rides
Annual Drunk Driving Reduction 10%
Annual Drunk Driving Deaths: 18,000

Society C: Death Penalty for Drunk Drivers at roadside
Drunk Driving Reduction: 95% first year, 100% in later years
Annual Drunk Driving Deaths: 1000 in first year, 0 in later years
Annual Execution Deaths: 600 in first year, 0 in later years

You are saying B would be automatically preferable to C because B “works” and is a “providing services” approach. In doing so you drop your cost-benefit objective approach and insert normative statements into the analysis. I am saying that a full cost-benefit analysis would be necessary before claiming B is preferable. For example you have would have to estimate the beneft of drunk driving. (Yes there is a benefit to drunk driving otherwise rational people would not do it.) (That was directed to other readers not at you. I know you understand.)

My point is you don’t know B is preferable to C just because it “works” and it is a “providing services” approach. Any one of A, B, or C might win out in a complete cost-benefit analysis.

Where I depart, or at least I believe I do based on this admittedly short piece, is this para:

Money, however, is not the only thing we should try to economize. We should strive to be economical in imposing suffering. Having fewer prisoners is desirable: not, primarily, because prisons cost money but because prisons are horrible places, imposing misery not only on those confined in them but to the people who care about those prisoners: their families, their friends, and their neighbors.

The notion that deserved suffering somehow “doesn’t count” is a piece of mere hand-waving with no rational basis in terms of benefit-cost analysis; desert may be, morally, a reason to punish, or a limit on punishment, but it can’t be a reason to ignore the fact that punishment hurts. And in the usual case the suffering of the families, friends, and neighbors of prisoners is entirely undeserved.

“Usual[ly] … entirely undeserved?” How does he reach that conclusion? Frequently, those with collateral suffering to some degree condoned, directly or indirectly benefitted, or failed to exercise their moral duty to prevent, the criminal behavior. Certainly this is the case in the great majority of pro bono clients I have seen with such problems. E.g., Mom happily spent Son’s drug money and provided him a “business” location. Her suffering at Son’s resulting incarceration is real, but people will differ over calling it “undeserved.”

It’s correct to look at crime dispassionately and employ cost-benefit analysis where one can. It’s not correct to try to remove perpetrator’s suffering — the more they suffer, the more they are deterred (not an exact equation but it’s strongly correlated). and suffering that punishment causes to the perp’s immediate friends and family, while unfortunate, is also part of the feedback that prevents crime: parents, kids, neighbors etc. will do more, at the margin, to discourage criminality if it hurts them as a collateral effect. Mr. Kleinman is correct that we need to draw some boundaries; at one extreme, it’s good that family “suffers” by being separated from the criminal; at the other extreme, we wouldn’t burn down the mother’s house (some countries at war may do this, but we’re not at war; let’s not get sidetracked about that tactic, I’m using it only to illustrate). We might forfeit that house, but only in extreme cases. Line drawing is always difficult but the need for it can’t be dismissed as “hand waving.”

Mr. Kleinman needs to distinguish between suffering that is reasonably proximate and therefore just, and is also deterrent, and suffering that isn’t proximate, is unjust, and serves no purpose or is affirmatively counterproductive. He hasn’t made that distinction yet, at least not persuasively. Perhaps a fertile area for him to explore in future posts?

Crime-avoidance behavior can impose costs on others beyond shifting crime risk. Residents and businesses fleeing high-crime neighborhoods generally make things worse for those who stay behind; abandoned houses make bad neighbors and shuttered factories and stores provide no jobs.

The word “impose” is completely gratuitous here. If all the eligible bachelors in a town marry gals from out of town, yes the result is fewer opportunities for the town gals, but there is no imposition. It’s the same thing.

Residents and businesses fleeing high-crime neighborhoods

You mean driven out of high-crime neighborhoods? The costs are being imposed by the criminals, not by the people and firms seeking to get away from the criminals.

The notion that deserved suffering somehow “doesn’t count” is a piece of mere hand-waving with no rational basis in terms of benefit-cost analysis…

Or is “cost-benefit analysis” too often an exercise in mere hand-waving?

controlling crime by providing services, where it works, is greatly preferable to controlling crime by threatening or inflicting damage.

Tax-based services? So, we increase government robbery to buy off private robbers? Government at all levels is already robbing us blind to provide its “services,” and it looks as though the price will be going up astronomically in the near future. So spare me, please.

The phrase “desert may be, morally, a reason to punish” caught my eye. I thought, “Isn’t it ‘just desserts’”? I was wrong: “desert” relates to “deserve”, and that is how Shakespeare uses the word.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/desert

Googlefight shows 4 million “just desserts” to 400,000 “just deserts”, so people are ten times as likely to get this wrong as right.

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=just+deserts&word2=just+desserts

in terms of benefit-cost analysis; desert may be, morally, a reason to punish, or a limit on punishment, but it can’t be a reason to ignore the fact that punishment hurts. And in the usual case the suffering of the families, friends, and neighbors of prisoners is entirely undeserved.

What is ignored here is the cost to the victims — all the victims — of not punishing. I cannot imagine the anguish of a parent — the cost to the parent in the dry language of economics — who has a child raped and brutally murdered and then suffers the further tragedy of learning the child’s killer will spend less than life in prison. Similar costs are endured by all victims whose violators are punished to a disproportionately mild degree.

Also, removal of many offenders from the midst of their families and neighbors far from imposing costs on those families and neighbors may actually reduce their costs, e.g., the hospital bills and psychological trauma created by an abusive spouse or father and the general discomfort created by a rowdy and violent neighbor. I speak from some personal experience here.

There was a case in NZ a few years ago where a mother killed her severely-disabled child. Under the circumstances it seemed incredibly unlikely that she would kill again in the future (she had no other children and was past menopause), it also seemed very unlikely that not punishing her would encourage a rash of child murders – parents who killed children for other reasons already got ample jail time. Yet the court gave her a many-year jail term, and I think that was just. The daughter’s life had value, and I would not like to live in a society where a person could murder another, be convicted with evidence beyond reasonable doubt, and yet not pay any price for it.

This is what I like about the redistributive justice idea – it places victims at the centre of dealing with crime, unlike Kleinman’s approach which basically ignores them except as economic entities. Though I’ve never read a really strong attack on redistributive justice so I probably have a biased view of it.

Undo the radicalism of the 1960s and restore the human dignity of Americans too accustomed to living in fear of crime.

The direct and secondary costs of crime avoidance easily swamp the immediate costs of victimization.

I realise that you’re blogging about costs (i.e. cash or the equivalent), so this is outside the scope of your discussion, but there are other factors besides monetary loss in crime avoidance. Many people – women and parents of children especially – will do a lot of things to avoid any sort of crime, since initially non-violent crimes can become violent, which is not necessarily irrational. A pure analysis of the monetary aspects of crime and deterrence misses some of the reasons for avoiding crime.

Of course, this analysis has a much harder time justifying restrictions against “victimless” crimes (and to the extent that hurting yourself is imposing a cost, what’s the point in imposing a punishment for that infraction?)

The real problem you have, though, is demonstrating that an “actual, practicable, scalable social program” has actually reduced crime. In an environment where there has been a significant general decrease in crime, how can you possibly control for the general reduction, in part attributable to precisely the practice you condemn (i.e. locking criminals up)? You would need extremely good evidence in order to make a convincing case.