By Aaron Chalfin and Brittany Street

This paper reviews and distills a wide array of recent social science literature and offers an evidence-based vision for how public safety can be maintained while relying less on the use of incarceration. We offer the following lessons from the literature. First, while interventions that increase economic opportunities have been shown to be effective in reducing criminal behavior, particularly income generating crime, interventions which change how people think appear to be even more effective at reducing the types of crimes that most frequently lead to incarceration. Second, a wide variety of investments targeted towards children in disadvantaged neighborhoods appear to be effective and likely pay for themselves over time. Third, while there is a natural concern that diverting criminal defendants from traditional prosecution will erode the deterrence value of criminal sanctions, the evidence suggests that for first-time and younger offenders, individuals who have been diverted – either through a formal program or informally via “non-prosecution” – tend to be less likely to be rearrested in the future. Fourth, the evidence suggests that law enforcement can play an important role in reducing the use of incarceration when police are visible and engage in high-value activities that deter crime or focus their arrest powers more intensively on violent and/or high-volume offenders; in doing so, they have the ability to reduce crime through deterrence and focused incapacitation without increasing the footprint of the justice system. Finally, there is potential to meaningfully reduce incarceration levels through sentencing reforms without compromising public safety – so long as the reforms are structured in such a way as to target the least criminally productive offenders, while retaining in custody those offenders who are most likely to commit the costliest offenses or who are likeliest to offend in high volumes.

Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity,, 2023. 69p