Prison is a Bargain
David Green, 27 September 2004
According to the Populus poll for The Times, cutting crime and anti-social behaviour is the issue most likely to make Labour voters turn out to vote for the Blair Government.
Crime has been falling since the mid-1990s, but the Government is reluctant to do the one thing that unambiguously works best. It is putting enormous resources into funding alternatives to prison, such as ‘thinking skills’ programmes and the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme, but so far they have been nowhere near as effective as prison.
For a fuller discussion of the cost-effectiveness of prison take a look at Prison is a Bargain.
Of course you could take the advice of an old joke and nationalise crime. That way it definitely would NOT pay (though nowadays to make it more effective, allow the EU to produce rules governing crime and the poor victimised criminals might just be forced to get a real job …).