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Full-Text Articles in Law
General Equilibrium Effects Of Prison On Crime: Evidence From International Comparisons, Justin Mccrary, Sarath Sanga
General Equilibrium Effects Of Prison On Crime: Evidence From International Comparisons, Justin Mccrary, Sarath Sanga
Faculty Scholarship
We compare crime and incarceration rates over time for the United States, Canada, and England and Wales, as well as for a small selection of comparison countries. Shifts in U.S. punishment policy led to a five-fold increase in the incarceration rate, while nearly every other country experienced only minor increases in incarceration. The large shifts in U.S. punishment policy do not seem to have caused commensurately large improvements in public safety.
On The American Paradox Of Laissez Faire And Mass Incarceration, Bernard E. Harcourt
On The American Paradox Of Laissez Faire And Mass Incarceration, Bernard E. Harcourt
Faculty Scholarship
In The Illusion of Free Markets (Harvard 2011), Professor Bernard Harcourt analyzes the evolution of a distinctly American paradox: in the country that has done the most to promote the idea of a hands-off government, we run the single largest prison complex in the entire world. Harcourt traces this paradox back to the eighteenth century and demonstrates how the presumption of government incompetence in economic affairs has been coupled with that of government legitimacy in the realm of policing and punishing. Harcourt shows how these linked presumptions have fueled the expansion of the carceral sphere in the nineteenth and twentieth …