Penny-Wise on Crime

[Geee]

National Review:

Penny-Wise on Crime
Probation is only cheaper than imprisonment when you ignore the real costs.

For more than 200 years, the political Left has been coming up with reasons why criminals should not be punished as much as they are, or at all. The latest gambit in Missouri is providing judges with the costs of incarcerating the criminals they sentence.

According to the New York Times, “a three-year prison sentence would run more than $37,000 while probation would cost $6,770.” For a more serious crime, where a five-year imprisonment would cost more than $50,000, it would cost less than $9,000 for what is described as “five years of intensive probation.”

This is only the latest in a long line of “alternatives to incarceration” schemes that are constantly being pushed by all sorts of clever people, not only in Missouri but throughout the United States and across the Atlantic, especially in Britain.
The most obvious question, which is being resolutely ignored in these scientific-sounding calculations, is: What is the cost of turning criminals loose? Phrases like “intensive probation” may create the illusion that criminals at large are somehow under control of the authorities, but illusions are especially dangerous when it comes to crime.

Another question that ought to be obvious is: Why are we counting only the cost to the government of putting a criminal behind bars, but not the cost to the public of turning him loose?