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Criminal justice reform guided by evidence: social control works—The Academy of Experimental Criminology 2022 Joan McCord Lecture

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Abstract

Objective

Joan McCord was an experimental criminologist who advocated for evaluating social programs for efficacy, benefits, and potential harms to guide crime prevention policy. This paper argues that criminal justice reform should be guided by evidence for effective social programs that guard against unintended harms. Programs that focus on social control are consistent with basic facts of crime and guard against the tail risk of surges in serious crime and violence. This paper discusses the evidence from evaluations of social programs which are based on principals of social control in families, schools, neighborhoods, and the criminal justice system.

Methods

This paper draws upon the evaluations of social programs that have been published based on at least one high-quality experiment or two rigorous quasi-experiments, that can be scaled to entire populations, and are sustainable over time.

Results

A review of experimental and quasi-experimental evidence found that social programs focused on increasing social control (formal or informal) in families, schools, communities, and by the criminal justice system are effective at preventing serious crime. Some of the social programs with rigorous evidence of preventing crime could be scaled to entire populations for prolonged durations with adequate planning and implementation models.

Conclusion

Many contemporary criminal justice reforms have little evidence of efficacy, and run the risk of generating unintended adverse outcomes related to the spread of serious crime and violence. Existing evidence suggests that social programs that focus on social control can act as buffers against the tail risk of serious crime. The social programs with evidence of preventing crime should be expanded, monitored for fidelity in implementation, and continuously evaluated to improve their efficacy and sustainability as effective safeguards against the rise in serious crime and violence.

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Notes

  1. Another classic example is the low-income, high-rise housing projects of the 1960s. Created with the best of intentions, they proved to be crime attractors and generators of crime disorder, leading to their eventual abandonment as a theory and physical destruction through funds provided by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (MacDonald et al., 2019).

  2. This basic mathematical principle is shown by Jensen’s inequality, and also applies to finance and other fields that are driven by nonlinear distributions that follow power laws with scale invariance (Taleb, 2007).

  3. It is important to note that the Becker model is only linear in expectation. One can use any number of non-normal probability distributions (e.g., Exponential, Geometric, Pareto, Poisson) and invoke a Becker model of crime. In equation 1 s and p are not assigned a dimension. However, the basic model still assumes that offending is linearly related to the probability and severity of punishment in expectation.

  4. One could imagine, for example, a more comprehensive federal investment in distressed neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage that resembles the Marshall plan used in the aftermath of World War II to rebuild and rehabilitate Europe. A plan could involve major investments in mixed-used and mixed income housing development to deconcentrate poverty; building newer roads, sidewalks, and park space; generating more mixed income neighborhoods where public schools are less economically segregated; and providing a more attractive set of neighborhoods for business investment that would generate more economic mobility for working families.

  5. Social control-based programs that are effective should not lead to net-widening of the criminal justice system. Social programs that are the most effective at implementing informal and formal social control should lead to more crime prevention and less justice system involvement.

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Acknowledgements

My thanks to Anthony Braga, Aaron Chalfin, Thomas Hogan, Charles Loeffler, Jerry Lee, and Lawrence Sherman for their comments on the talk and/or this essay.

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    John MacDonald

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MacDonald, J. Criminal justice reform guided by evidence: social control works—The Academy of Experimental Criminology 2022 Joan McCord Lecture. J Exp Criminol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-023-09558-w

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