People commit crime for a wide variety of reasons, some related to persistent social problems such as poverty, negative peer influence, or official neglect, others related to untreated mental health problems or substance abuse, and still others to more basic features of human decisionmaking that are particularly prevalent among young people and lead to impulsive, short-sighted actions. These contributing factors for criminal behavior may interact and reinforce one another in complicated ways. Yet there is currently no adequate forum for bringing together researchers from economics, sociology, criminology, demography, psychology, law and other fields to promote inter-disciplinary discussions relevant to the study of crime. A second limitation of crime research by American scholars in particular is that it tends to be provincial, and so ignores potential insights derived from variation in policy and social conditions within or across other countries.
This summer workshop will bring together economists and non-economists, from the U.S. and elsewhere, to discuss empirical research related to crime. The theme of the workshop is the potential of social policy as a tool for crime prevention. This theme is motivated by a growing line of research that examines the possibility of efficiency gains from redirecting resources from selected criminal justice activities to evidence-based social policy interventions.
The intellectual merit of this workshop comes from the opportunity it affords to bring empirical researchers from a wide range of disciplines together to discuss crime, thereby enriching the interdisciplinary nature of research on crime and enhancing the theoretical study of phenomenon related to crime. There are also potentially important benefits to society as a whole from this project. Since 1970 the incarceration rate in America increased nearly seven-fold. Financial problems have forced a number of states to dramatically reduce their prison populations, while a growing number of policymakers have expressed interest in whether there are lower-cost alternatives to mass incarceration for preventing crime. Participants in this workshop will explicitly explore this possibility.
The grant for this interdisciplinary workshop has created a robust and vibrant forum for the discussion of the economic and social research that can influence criminal behavior. This grant has prompted a regular working group at the National Bureau of Economic Research that continues to bring together leading minds in economics and other disciplines to discuss these problems. Topics have covered a range of salient criminal justice issues, from estimating the benefits and costs of crime reduction programs to the analysis of underground markets in drugs, guns, and other illicit goods to examining how crime impacts other parts of daily life like education and health. These meetings have brought together leading scholars in the criminal justice field with promising young graduate students and enhanced critical and scientific discussion about crime policy. Numerous papers presented at the working groups from 2010 to 2014 have been published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals. In addition an interdisciplinary edited volume of papers drawn from the workshops’ participants was published by the University of Chicago Press (Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs, Edited by Philip J. Cook, Jens Ludwig, and Justin McCrary). Ultimately, this grant has helped promote a cooperative and interdisciplinary approach to tackling the difficult problems surrounding crime policy. By creating a venue for leading academics to come together this grant has advanced discourse on this topic and helped to inspire new avenues of scientific research on crime. This impact can be seen by not only the intention to continue similar workshops but the progressive increases in participation and submission from some of the world’s leading scholars on criminal justice research. The lasting impact of this workshop series will continue to be felt throughout academic – and hopefully – policymaking communities for years to come.
