Prison population growth and crime reduction

The impact of state prison populations on crime is typically estimated by applying the lambda, the individual crime rate, of prisoners or arrestees. We outline the problems with this approach, attempt to reanalyze the widely divergent lambdas derived in past research, and make adjustments necessary to use lambdas for estimating the incapacitation impact. The result is an uncertain estimate of 16 to 25 index crimes averted per year per each additional prisoner. We argue that regression analysis can provide a better estimate of the impact of prison population growth. Applying the Granger test to pooled state data over 19 years, we found that prison population growth leads to lower crime rates but that crime rate changes have little or no short-term impact on prison population growth. Next we regressed crime rates on prison population and conclude that, on average, at least 17 index crimes are averted per additional prisoner. The impact is limited mainly to property crime.

[1]  William J. McGuire,et al.  Relationships Between Crime Rates and Incarceration Rates: Further Analysis , 1983 .

[2]  I. Marshall,et al.  MEASURING LAMBDA THROUGH SELF‐REPORTS* , 1991 .

[3]  J. Gibbs,et al.  THE ARTIFACT ISSUE IN DETERRENCE RESEARCH , 1990 .

[4]  Robert J. Sampson,et al.  Crime in Cities: The Effects of Formal and Informal Social Control , 1986, Crime and Justice.

[5]  A. Blumstein,et al.  Estimation of Individual Crime Rates from Arrest Records , 1979 .

[6]  Richard Rosenfeld,et al.  TREND AND DEVIATION IN CRIME RATES: A COMPARISON OF UCR AND NCS DATA FOR BURGLARY AND ROBBERY* , 1991 .

[7]  C. Perkins.  National Corrections Reporting Program, 1991 , 1994 .

[8]  E. Zedlewski.  New Mathematics of Imprisonment: A Reply to Zimring and Hawkins , 1989 .

[9]  A. Blumstein.  Criminal careers and "career criminals" , 1986 .

[10]  M. Peterson,et al.  Doing Crime : A Survey of California Prison Inmates , 1980 .

[11]  David R. Greenberg.  The Cost - Benefit Analysis of Imprisonment , 1990 .

[12]  K. Wolpin.  A Time Series-Cross Section Analysis of International Variation in Crime and Punishment , 1980 .

[13]  Jacqueline Cohen,et al.  Incapacitation as a Strategy for Crime Control: Possibilities and Pitfalls , 1983, Crime and Justice.

[14]  Jeffrey A. Roth,et al.  Understanding and Preventing Violence , 1992 .

[15]  C. Granger,et al.  Spurious regressions in econometrics , 1974 .

[16]  J. Petersilia,et al.  Criminal Careers of Habitual Felons. , 1977 .

[17]  W. Fuller,et al.  Distribution of the Estimators for Autoregressive Time Series with a Unit Root , 1979 .

[18]  C. Granger.  Some recent development in a concept of causality , 1988 .

[19]  S. Menard.  RESIDUAL GAINS, RELIABILITY, AND THEUCR-NCS RELATIONSHIP: A COMMENT ON BLUMSTEIN, COHEN, AND ROSENFELD (1991)* , 1992 .

[20]  A. Blumstein,et al.  Characterizing Criminal Careers , 1987, Science.

[21]  C. Moody,et al.  Age structure and crime rates: The conflicting evidence , 1991 .

[22]  D. Campbell,et al.  EXPERIMENTAL AND QUASI-EXPERIMENT Al DESIGNS FOR RESEARCH , 2012 .

[23]  Mitchell B. Chamlin,et al.  The impact of the wilson administration on economic crime rates , 1991 .

[24]  Gresham M. Sykes,et al.  Prison commitments, crime, and unemployment: A theoretical and empirical specification for the United States, 1933–1985 , 1991 .

[25]  Michele Strange.  Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics 1973: U.S. Justice Department. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Washington: G.P.O., 1973.499 p. $6.95. (J 1.2:C 86/24) , 1975 .

[26]  L. Bowker.  Crime and the Use of Prisons in the United States: A Time Series Analysis , 1981 .

[27]  K. Markides,et al.  Effect of the Age Structure of a Stationary Population on Crime Rates, The , 1976 .

[28]  P. Langan.  America's Soaring Prison Population , 1991, Science.

[29]  F. Zimring,et al.  The New Mathematics of Imprisonment , 1988 .

[30]  F. Zimring,et al.  The scale of imprisonment , 1991 .

[31]  M. Smith,et al.  Macroeconomic and Social-Control Policy Influences on Crime Rate Changes, 1948-1985 , 1988 .

[32]  Reuel Shinnar,et al.  The Effects of the Criminal Justice System on the Control of Crime: A Quantitative Approach , 1975 .

[33]  Alan C. Stockman.  Introduction to Economics , 1995 .

[34]  W. Gove,et al.  ARE UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS A VALID INDICATOR OF THE INDEX CRIMES? AN AFFIRMATIVE ANSWER WITH MINOR QUALIFICATIONS* , 1985 .

[35]  D. Greenberg.  The Dynamics of Oscillatory Punishment Processes , 1977 .

[36]  M. Eisenberg,et al.  Crime and Incarceration: Some Comparative Findings from the 1980s , 1992 .

[37]  Richard A. Berk,et al.  Prisons as Self-Regulating Systems: A Comparison of Historical Patterns in California for Male and Female Offenders , 1983 .

[38]  A. Blumstein,et al.  Deterrence and incapacitation : estimating the effects of criminal sanctions on crime rates , 1980 .

[39]  Y. Mundlak.  On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data , 1978 .

[40]  Michele Strange.  Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics, 1979 , 1981 .

[41]  I. Marshall,et al.  An Experimental Comparison of Two Self-Report Methods for Measuring Lambda , 1992 .

[42]  P. Cook.  Research in Criminal Deterrence: Laying the Groundwork for the Second Decade , 1980, Crime and Justice.

[43]  D. Rubinfeld,et al.  Econometric models and economic forecasts , 2002 .

[44]  D. Greenberg.  The Incapacitative Effect of Imprisonment: Some Estimates , 1975 .

[45]  C. Sims.  MACROECONOMICS AND REALITY , 1977 .

[46]  J. Chaiken,et al.  Varieties of Criminal Behavior , 1982 .

[47]  D. Farrington,et al.  Advancing Knowledge About Co-Offending: Results from a Prospective Longitudinal Survey of London Males , 1991 .

[48]  W. G. Nagel.  On Behalf of a Moratorium on Prison Construction , 1977 .

[49]  A. Blumstein,et al.  THE UCR-NCS RELATIONSHIP REVISITED: A REPLY TO MENARD , 1992 .

[50]  M. Geerken,et al.  THE NEW ORLEANS INMATE SURVEY: A TEST OF GREENWOOD'S PREDICTIVE SCALE* , 1991 .

[51]  A. Blumstein,et al.  Theory of the Stability of Punishment, A. , 1973 .

[52]  C. Granger,et al.  Co-integration and error correction: representation, estimation and testing , 1987 .

[53]  R. Tibshirani,et al.  An introduction to the bootstrap , 1993 .

[54]  Jonathan Simon,et al.  The New Penology: Notes on the Emerging Strategy of Corrections and Its Implications , 1992 .