Does Punishment Do More Good Than Harm

Steven D. Levitt, "The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation," Quarterly Journal of Economics 111, no. 2 (May 1996): 319; Thomas Marvell and Carlisle Moody, "Prison Population Growth and Crime Reduction," Journal of Quantitative Criminology 10 (1994):109; William Spelman, Criminal Incapacitation (New York: Plenum, 1994). But see William Sabol and James Lynch, Crime Policy Report: Did Getting Tough on Crime Pay? (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 1997), available from ; Internet; accessed 7 January 2004 (evidence that get-tough policies have reduced crime is mixed) and Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon J. Hawkins, Incapacitation: Penal Confinement and Restraint of Crime (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) (no significant incapacitation effect).

Occasionally an argument is presented for excluding costs to the offender. For example, Mark A. Cohen argues that only "external" costs should count as social costs of crime and punishment. He defines "external" costs as those involuntarily incurred by third parties. Costs imposed by offenders on victims fall into this category; but Cohen fails to recognize that the costs imposed by society on the offender are also involuntarily incurred (absent an argument that crime counts as consent, see Chapter 4), or that the dollar cost of imprisonment to taxpayers (which he counts as the "cost" of punishment) would not count as an "external cost" under his definition because it is a burden voluntarily assumed. Mark A. Cohen, "Measuring the Costs and Benefits of Crime and Justice," in Criminal Justice 2000 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 2000), vol. 4: 263-315. Others simply note that most people don’t care about costs to offenders, which may be charitably interpreted as a suggestion that the justification for imposing these costs is to be found elsewhere.

Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (New York: Hafner Publishing...