Crime Reduced, But at a Cost

When it comes to local budget decisions, the goal of fiscal balance often means that one type of expenditure is cut so that another can be increased. If fire and police departments need more, for example, the libraries get less. These balances and tradeoffs happen every budget cycle at various levels of government. The resulting sacrifice has become institutional.

But with the prospect of rising crime and ex-cons roaming the streets, the general public seems to be more open to diverting funds away from other non-crime-fighting programs to help maintain public safety. In the early 1990s, the state of Georgia updated its prison policies to increase sentencing for parole-eligible criminals under the assumption that more time in the slammer would mean less crime when convicts became ex-convicts and got back out on the streets. According to a new analysis, that has proven to be true, to a small degree. But keeping those criminals in prison for longer amounts of time has also greatly increased the cost to taxpayers. The benefits of this policy, it turns out, are far outweighed by the costs.