Criminal Justice (8): Return on Investment
Getting Bang for the Buck
Imagine the following made-up news story:
Los Angeles: After eight years of support, Venture Capitalist I.M. Moneyguy has broken ties with Mark N. Ovator, creator of the the TotalHome app. Moneyguy had provided $2.5 million in startup funds to support the TotalHome launch. The app was intended to monitor the various wireless systems available for home use — appliances, surfaces, electronics, thermostats, security, etc — and effortlessly notify third party providers whenever there was a need in the household, preventing the homeowner from being surprised when service is needed. Expectations were high after the pilot test linked appliances to repair people. But each time a new system was brought online, it proved incompatible with the previous linkage. Moneyguy provided another $1 million three years ago, due to existing sunk costs in the project. After a tense meeting, Moneyguy and Ovator acknowledged that the hoped-for system would always be no more than a piecemeal operation, at which point Moneyguy determined that his involvement would end.
If you’ve followed my previous pieces in this series, you can anticipate where I’m headed with this one. I’ve written about how our concerns about crime rates, while not necessarily aligning with the data, support our beliefs that more enforcement is needed. I’ve written about law enforcement deployment strategies and the resulting impact on “crimes known to the police”. I’ve considered the ways in which police work is reactive more than proactive.1 I’ve discussed how the criminal justice funnel works and its reliance on plea bargaining as a way of processing cases with limited court resources. I’ve written that cash fees put people in jail awaiting trial in spite of their presumed innocence. And this week I wrote about the impacts of incarceration over the long haul.
Each of these factors represents a significant investment of public resources.2 I spent some time reviewing some criminal justice related budgets. I learned from the Denver Gazette that the city of Denver spends nearly 40% of its annual budget on “safety”, a total of over half a billion dollars. The story described the mayor’s response to this spending:
Hancock defended the heavy safety spending when he presented the budget last week, attributing the spending to rising crime rates. The budget would designate $13.6 million to hiring new first responders in police, fire, sheriff and 911 to address the crime, he said.
“Keeping our residents, visitors and neighborhoods safe is one of our highest priorities,” Hancock said. “Exacerbated by COVID-19, rising crime rates are taking place globally and certainly in every city in America.”
Sure, we could come back next year and see if hiring more officers reduced the crime rate. But we’ve also seen that the crime rate fluctuates on its own so it will be impossible to determine cause and effect.3
Adams County, where Denver is located, dedicated an additional $900 million to the Judicial Department. The ColoradoNewsline site describes the new budget discussed in the state house as follows:
The budget bill being debated in the state House of Representatives this week includes $908 million for the Judicial Department, a 5.2% change from last year. Money from the state’s general fund that is dedicated for the department would increase by $46.2 million in the fiscal year beginning July 1. The general fund, comprising mostly revenue from income and sales taxes, is where lawmakers have the most control over state spending.
Additional funds went to enhanced IT support, salary raises, and an office of public guardianship. The Colorado Public Defender's’ office requested a budget of $134,000 for FY 2023.
There are five levels of correctional facilities in the state of Colorado. For FY 2021, the corrections department reports annual costs per inmate as ranging from $46,000 to $57,000 with a total from all levels as $55,716. With an average daily count of 11,373, that comes to $633.7 million per year. In contrast, community supervision (probation) comes in at an annual inmate cost of $12,000 for a total cost of $14 million. This doesn’t consider the costs involved in the county jail system, which holds misdemeanors and people awaiting trial.
It’s not right to add these figures together as I’ve combined city, county, and state data. Nevertheless, it’s clear that Colorado spends upwards of $2 Billion on criminal justice related concerns.4
Given our various concerns regarding crime rates, the importance of reducing recidivism (where people return to prison due to additional crime), lessening community and family disruptions, it’s hard to argue that we’re getting a reasonable return on our investments in criminal justice. This is a “defund the police” claim. This is a problem that we’ve developed very expensive institutional structures that don’t achieve our desired goals very well.
But like Mr. Moneyguy, we’ve got so much sunk cost in the current “system” that we can’t think of doing anything else. If we were to build a system from scratch, we might find ways of doing something that really made a difference.
This is one of those areas where political polarization could be overcome. Progressives want a better criminal justice system because they worry about harsh treatment and the impacts of mass incarceration. Conservatives want a system of government that limits citizen tax burdens while supporting law and order. A good system of criminal justice reform (my final newsletter in this series) might just give us some way forward.
In light of this fact, it always amazes me that our first response to a rising crime rate is to hire more officers. That guarantees more follow-up and more crimes known to the police but doesn’t result in preventing crime unless we drastically rethink deployment.
I’m not even dealing with private prisons here.
Insert the story about keeping away tigers here.
I added them together anyway