BRENNAN CENTER brennan center for justice justice center for brennan FOR JUSTICE what caused the crime decline? the caused what WHAT CAUSED THE CRIME DECLINE? Dr. Oliver Roeder, Lauren-Brooke Eisen, and Julia Bowling Foreword by Dr. Joseph E. Stiglitz Executive Summary by Inimai Chettiar Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law ABOUT THE BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that seeks to improve our systems of democracy and justice. We work to hold our political institutions and laws accountable to the twin American ideals of democracy and equal justice for all. The Center’s work ranges from voting rights to campaign finance reform, from ending mass incarceration to preserving Constitutional protection in the fight against terrorism. Part think tank, part advocacy group, part cutting- edge communications hub, we start with rigorous research. We craft innovative policies. And we fight for them — in Congress and the states, the courts, and in the court of public opinion. ABOUT THE BRENNAN CENTER’S JUSTICE PROGRAM The Brennan Center’s Justice Program seeks to secure our nation’s promise of “equal justice for all” by creating a rational, effective, and fair justice system. Its priority focus is to reform the criminal justice system so that it better reduces crime and reduces mass incarceration. The program uses economics to produce new empirical analysis and innovative policy solutions to advance this critical goal. It also works to ensure a fair civil legal system. ABOUT THE BRENNAN CENTER’S PUBLICATIONS Red cover | Research reports offer in-depth empirical findings. Blue cover | Policy proposals offer innovative, concrete reform solutions. White cover | White papers offer a compelling analysis of a pressing legal or policy issue. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Dr. Oliver Roeder is an economics fellow in the Justice Program. With expertise in political economy and microeconomics, he uses economic analysis to better understand criminal justice law and policy. Dr. Roeder focuses on identifying the connections between criminal justice policies and outcomes, as well as analyzing the economic effects of mass incarceration. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin and an A.B. in economics from the University of Chicago. Lauren-Brooke Eisen is counsel in the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Previously, she was a Senior Program Associate at the Vera Institute of Justice in the Center on Sentencing and Corrections. Ms. Eisen also served as an Assistant District Attorney in New York City in the Sex Crime and Special Victims Bureau, Criminal Court Bureau, and Appeals Bureau where she prosecuted a wide variety of criminal cases. She has worked as a journalist in Laredo, Texas covering crime and justice. She is currently an adjunct instructor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and previously developed and taught a seminar on mass incarceration at Yale College. She holds an A.B. from Princeton University and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center. Julia Bowling is a research associate in the Justice Program. Ms. Bowling assists with economic analysis and modeling, and policy research on criminal justice. She has conducted research documenting the impact of incarceration on employment and the benefits of investing in reentry programs to reduce recidivism. Ms. Bowling holds a B.A. in economics from Oberlin College. ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR Veronica Clark was an economics and statistics researcher in the Justice Program from 2013 to 2014. She contributed considerable research, analysis, and drafting to this report. Ms. Clark holds a B.A. with honors and highest distinction in mathematics and economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her M.A. in economics from New York University in January 2015. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Brennan Center gratefully acknowledges the Democracy Alliance Partners, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Public Welfare Foundation, Rockefeller Family Fund, Vital Projects Fund, and William B. Wiener, Jr. Foundation for their support of the Justice Program. The authors are especially indebted to the Brennan Center’s Justice Program Director Inimai Chettiar, whose expertise, substantive engagement, and editing helped craft this report at each stage. They also thank Michael Waldman and John Kowal for their guidance on this report and their high standards of empirical rigor for Brennan Center research. The authors are grateful to the Brennan Center leadership for recognizing the importance of melding economics and law to reform the criminal justice system. They are very grateful to Veronica Clark for her significant research, analysis and drafting contributions. The authors also thank the following Brennan Center colleagues: Jessica Eaglin, Nicole Fortier, Abigail Finkelman, Zachary Crowell, Justin Hurdle, Chantal Khalil, Leroy Langeveld, Rebecca Ramaswamy, Nathan Rouse, Tyler Sloan, Victoria Volpe, Madeline Tien, and Jordan White for their research; Jeanine Plant-Chirlin, Desiree Ramos Reiner, Jim Lyons, Naren Daniel, Lena Glaser, and Mikayla Terrell for their editing and Communications assistance; and Nicole Austin-Hillery and Danyelle Solomon for their assistance. They are grateful as well to Mark Anderson, Eric Baumer, Shawn Bushway, Eric Cadora, Todd Clear, Geert Dhondt, Jeffrey Fagan, Janet Lauritsen, Michael Livermore, Tom Jorde, Michael Maltz, Jeffrey Miron, Erin Murphy, Robert Ostfeld, Terrance Pitts, Richard Revesz, Jessica Reyes, Gerald Rosenfeld, María Vélez, and David Weisburd for their insights. Finally, they extend their sincere gratitude to Foreword author, Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, for his contribution to this publication, as well as to the expert reviewers who provided detailed and insightful feedback on this report, Hon. Richard Posner, Daniel Rubinfeld, Richard Rosenfeld, Jim Bueermann, Darrel Stephens, John Firman, William Andrews, Preeti Chauhan, and Maurice Classen. TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword by Dr. Joseph E. Stiglitz 1 Executive Summary by Inimai Chettiar 3 Expert Reviewers 11 Summary of Methodology 12 I. State-Level Analysis of Crime 15 A. Criminal Justice Policies 15 1. Increased Incarceration 15 2. Increased Police Numbers 41 3. Use of Death Penalty 43 4. Enactment of Right-to-Carry Gun Laws 45 B. Economic Factors 48 5. Unemployment 48 6. Growth in Income 49 7. Inflation 51 8. Consumer Confidence 53 C. Social and Environmental Factors 55 9. Decreased Alcohol Consumption 55 10. Aging Population 56 11. Decreased Crack Use 58 12. Legalization of Abortion 60 13. Decreased Lead in Gasoline 62 II. City-Level Analysis of Crime 65 A. Policing 65 1. Introduction of CompStat 66 Conclusion 79 Appendix A: State Graphs on Incarceration & Crime 81 Appendix B: Expanded Methodology, Data Sources & Results Tables 95 Endnotes 111 FOREWORD By Joseph E. Stiglitz Our country has its share of challenges — poverty, unemployment, inequality. Economic analysis can help play a role in understanding and addressing these challenges. One of the great problems we face today is mass incarceration, a tragedy which has been powerfully documented. With almost 1 in 100 American adults locked away behind bars, our incarceration rate is the world’s highest — nine to ten times that of many European countries. This adds up to an overwhelming 2.3 million people in prison and jail today — nearly 40 percent of whom are African American.1 Yet lawmakers are slow to take action and public outrage is largely absent. This prodigious rate of incarceration is not only inhumane, it is economic folly. How many people sit needlessly in prison when, in a more rational system, they could be contributing to our economy? And, once out of prison, how many people face a lifetime of depressed economic prospects? When 1 in 28 children has a parent in prison, the cycle of poverty and unequal opportunity continues a tragic waste of human potential for generations. Americans spend $260 billion every year on criminal justice. That is more than one-quarter of the national deficit.2 A year in prison can cost more than a year at Harvard. This is not a hallmark of a well- performing economy and society. This vast fiscal and social toll was created in the name of protecting lives and property. But what do we know about the public safety benefits, the ostensible justification for our prison-centered approach to crime? Some advocates of this system of mass incarceration seem to contend that while the costs have been enormous, so have the benefits, the dramatic drop in crime. They would like to believe that this can be attributed in large measure to the explosion in incarceration. After all, when offenders go to prison, it would seem they are less likely to commit future crimes. But this instinctive reaction does not comport with the scientific evidence. This report addresses a critical question: What caused the American crime decline? Was it incarceration? Was it policing? Or was it something else? This groundbreaking empirical analysis from the Brennan Center shows that, on examination, the easy answers do not explain incarceration’s effect on crime. This report presents a rigorous and sophisticated empirical analysis performed on the most recent, comprehensive dataset to date. The authors conclude that incarceration had relatively little to do with the crime decline. They find that the dramatic increases in incarceration have had a limited, diminishing effect on crime. And they have quantified those minimal benefits. At today’s high incarceration rates, continuing to incarcerate more people has almost no effect on reducing crime. WHAT CAUSED THE CRIME DECLINE? | 1 These findings raise questions as to whether the toll — fiscal, economic, and societal — of mass incarceration is worthwhile in the face of these negligible crime control benefits. The report also demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary thinking. It melds law, economics, science, criminology, and public policy analysis to address the challenges facing our country. The United States has limited resources.