The Diminishing Returns of Mass Incarceration
The source applies diminishing returns to incarceration: extending imprisonment to less serious offenses may add progressively less public-safety benefit while increasing financial and social costs.
THE IDEA
The Diminishing Returns of Mass Incarceration
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
—John Locke
Incarcerating people has a long history as a means of punishing criminals and, in theory, making society safer. But incarceration has diminishing returns. Taking the most dangerous, violent individuals in a society off the street makes everyone else much safer. After all, most violent crimes are the work of a tiny minority of the population. However, the more people a society incarcerates, the less everyone benefits. As we punish more minor crimes with prison sentences, the safety gains decrease. Diminishing returns means that each additional expansion produces a smaller benefit. Further expansion may eventually cost taxpayers and society more than the additional safety benefit it provides. Mass incarceration rests on the assumption that locking up people who commit crimes is always a good idea. But that belief has a logical end point.
French sociologist Émile Durkheim argued that a certain amount of crime is inevitable in any society because what is considered criminal is based on the “collective sentiments” of a society. As long as people are divergent and have many different ideas about the correct ways to act and live, in any group there will be individuals whose actions will not follow the norms and who will be labeled as criminal. Durkheim did not condone crime but did argue that it is impossible to conceive a society without it. This is not to say that acts we currently label as criminal are merely divergent behavior, but that divergent behavior that people end up labeling as criminal is inevitable.
Even in a hypothetical world where none of the acts we condemn by law occurred, there would still be variations in behavior that some would consider criminal. Preventing the worst sorts of crimes does not create a perfect society. It just means people attach greater significance to crimes that are more minor. Continue this process and you end up with a world where someone might be, say, put to death for spitting their gum on the ground because it is the worst conceivable infraction.
What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.
—Warren Buffett
When to use it
A state legislature is debating whether to increase mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses; using this model, they could evaluate the marginal safety benefit versus costs.
A city council considers investing in community programs rather than expanding jail capacity to address petty crime, anticipating diminishing returns from incarceration.
Parents deciding on consequences for their children's misbehavior observe that overly harsh punishments for minor infractions lead to resentment without better behavior.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Removing Violent Offenders
The source argues that imprisoning the most dangerous offenders provides greater public-safety benefits than extending imprisonment to increasingly minor offenses. It uses that comparison to motivate examining marginal benefits and costs.
The Gum Execution Paradox
The source imagines a society eliminating serious offenses, then treating ever-smaller infractions as its worst crimes. Execution for spitting gum is its deliberately extreme illustration, not an inevitable consequence of expanding incarceration.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
At what point does increasing incarceration in your community start to yield diminishing returns in terms of public safety?
How might the inevitability of some deviance, as argued by Durkheim, influence your view on criminal justice reform?
Can you identify a situation in another domain (e.g., business, personal habits) where pursuing a solution to its logical extreme leads to absurd outcomes, similar to punishing gum-spitting with death?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- The Great Mental Models Volume 3 Systems and Mathematics