Law - Criminal Short assignment

Journal of Criminal Justice 40 (2012) 128–133

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Journal of Criminal Justice

Science, politics, and crime prevention: Toward a new crime policy

Brandon C. Welsh a,b,⁎, David P. Farrington c

a School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115 b Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1008 BH c Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, United Kingdom, CB3 9DA

⁎ Corresponding author at: School of Criminology and University, Churchill Hall, 360 Huntington Avenue, Bost

E-mail address: [email protected] (B.C. Welsh).

0047-2352/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2012.01.008

a b s t r a c t

a r t i c l e i n f o

Available online 6 March 2012

Objective: Crime prevention has entered a new, more robust phase of research activity and holds greater relevance to policy and practice today than ever before. It stands as an important component of an overall strategy to reduce crime. This paper sets out a modest proposal for a new crime policy to help build a

safer, more sustainable society. Materials and methods: Narrative meta-review of the crime prevention literature. Results: The central features include: ensuring that the highest quality scientific research is at center stage in the policy-making process; overcoming the “short-termism” politics of the day; and striking a greater bal- ance between crime prevention and crime control. Both simulation studies and experiences in Washington State show that early prevention can reduce crime, save money, and reduce the need for costly incarceration. Conclusions: Quality criminological research should be used to strike a policy balance between crime prevention and crime control.

© 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Crime prevention in the United States and in other Western na- tions has come a long way as an alternative approach to the dominant crime control model (Visher & Weisburd, 1998; Waller, 2006). It is not an overstatement to say that crime prevention is an important component of an overall strategy to reduce crime (Clarke, 2009; Welsh, 2011). There is a growing body of research on the effective- ness of crime prevention, covering a wide range of prevention modal- ities and program types, and spanning the full spectrum of prevention strategies: developmental, situational, and community (Welsh & Farrington, 2012). Support for crime prevention also comes from many other bodies of research, including public opinion (Cullen et al., 2007; Roberts & Hastings, 2012) and economic analysis (Drake, Aos, & Miller, 2009), not to mention an important body of work on the undesirable consequences of mass incarceration and other punitive policies (Clear, 2007; Tonry, 2004). This work has had the effect of drawing greater attention to the need for prevention.

Crime prevention refers to efforts to prevent crime or criminal offending in the first instance – before the act has been committed. It often takes place or is initiated outside of the formal justice system. In

Criminal Justice, Northeastern on, MA 02115.

rights reserved.

this respect, prevention is considered the fourth pillar of crime reduc- tion, alongside the crime-control institutions of police, courts, and cor- rections (Waller, 2006). This distinction views crime prevention as an alternative approach to these more traditional responses to crime.

An influential classification system distinguishes three alternative crime prevention strategies (Tonry & Farrington, 1995). Develop- mental prevention refers to interventions designed to prevent the development of criminal potential in individuals, especially those targeting risk and protective factors discovered in studies of human development (Tremblay & Craig, 1995; Farrington & Welsh, 2007). Situational prevention refers to interventions designed to prevent the occurrence of crimes by reducing opportunities and increasing the risk and difficulty of offending (Clarke, 2009; Cornish & Clarke, 2003). Community prevention refers to interventions designed to change the social conditions and institutions (e.g., families, peers, so- cial norms, clubs, and organizations) that influence offending in resi- dential communities (Hope, 1995).

This paper takes as its starting point the growing and wide- ranging research on the benefits of crime prevention. It also acknowl- edges that crime prevention is no panacea; it does not work for every- one or in every context. Indeed, there are gaps in knowledge and more attention needs to be paid to how crime prevention programs are implemented and disseminated for wider public use (Homel & Homel, 2012). But, as The Oxford Handbook of Crime Prevention (Welsh & Farrington, 2012) shows, crime prevention is at an especial- ly healthy stage of development and it is important to begin to wrestle with how crime prevention can further contribute to local,

129B.C. Welsh, D.P. Farrington / Journal of Criminal Justice 40 (2012) 128–133

state, and national efforts to reduce crime most effectively and cost- effectively.

This paper sets out a modest proposal for a new crime policy to help build a safer, more sustainable society. The central features in- clude: ensuring that the highest quality scientific research is at center stage in the policy-making process; overcoming the “short-termism”

politics of the day; and striking a greater balance between crime prevention and crime control.

Prevention science and evidence-based policy

Prevention science and evidence-based policy are two contempo- rary developments that have strengthened crime prevention. Both are best understood as frameworks that can be applied across a wide range of contexts, settings, and populations. At their core, each is concerned that the highest standards of science should be used to advance knowledge and improve public policy.

Prevention science has its roots in public health, and begins with a commitment to prevention that is grounded in the developmental ep- idemiology of specific health or social problems. In the case of youth violence prevention, for example, “Prevention science has provided a bridge between an understanding of how chronic violence develops and how prevention programs can interrupt that development” (Dodge, 2001, p. 63). Only the highest quality methods of scientific investigation are employed. Prospective longitudinal studies are used to identify the most important risk factors for offending. Ran- domized experimental and rigorous quasi-experimental designs are used to evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness of prevention pro- grams designed to tackle these factors. Prevention science is also characterized by a number of “logically sequential stages in the gen- eral development of prevention programs” (Dodge, 2001, p. 64).

The idea of an alternative, non-punitive response to the preven- tion of delinquency and offending is a crucial element in prevention science's mission. Its influence on crime prevention can be found in its adherence to the highest scientific standards, its effort to base prevention on epidemiology, and its focus on the process of taking prevention programs to scale and studying how to mitigate the prob- lem of attenuation of program effects (Welsh, Sullivan, & Olds, 2010).

An evidence-based approach to crime policy embraces prevention science's commitment to the use of the most scientifically valid stud- ies to evaluate programs. What it adds is the utilization of accumulat- ed scientific research evidence on effectiveness. It seeks to increase the influence of research on policy.

At the heart of the evidence-based model is the notion that “we are all entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts” (Sherman, 1998, p. 4). Use of opinions instead of facts to guide crime policy may cause iatrogenic effects (McCord, 2003), may lead to the implementation of programs that do not work at all, may waste scarce public resources (Drake et al., 2009), and may divert policy attention from the most important crime priorities of the day (Mears, 2007, 2010).

Support for an evidence-based approach to crime policy in the U.S. and elsewhere is growing (Welsh & Farrington, 2011). This growth has been fostered by a number of recent developments, including a movement toward an evidence-based approach in other disciplines such as medicine, education, and the social sciences more generally (Sherman, 2003); large-scale reviews of “what works” in crime pre- vention and criminal justice (Sherman et al., 1997, 2006; Welsh & Farrington, 2012); and, most recently, the establishment of the Camp- bell Collaboration and its Crime and Justice Group, which aims to carry out and disseminate reviews of the effectiveness of criminolog- ical interventions (Farrington, Weisburd, & Gill, 2011).

The U.S. interest, as well as the interest of many other Western countries, in an evidence-based approach to crime policy was advanced with the release of Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising, by Sherman and his colleagues (1997).2

This report was commissioned by the U.S. Congress as an indepen- dent, scientifically rigorous assessment of more than $4 billion worth of federally-sponsored anti-crime programs. Using a scientific methods scale to rate program evaluations combined with a vote- counting review method, conclusions were drawn about the effects of the full range of crime prevention and criminal justice measures.

The evidence-based approach has had some interesting influences thus far on how crime prevention is viewed in the U.S. The Preventing Crime report and its subsequent public and scholarly attention served to shift the debate away from the perception that support for crime prevention is tantamount to being soft on crime, which was at the heart of the opposition to the prevention spending in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (see Currie, 1998). The report put the focus squarely on what scientific evidence had to say about effectiveness. It left no room for moralizing about crime or politicizing what works or does not work; it sought to make the facts – arrived at by scrupulous evaluation – the centerpiece of the policy-making process. Of course, it would be misleading to suggest that everyone viewed the report and its follow-up studies in this fa- vorable light (e.g., Haggerty, 2008; Pawson, 2006).

Political challenges and some remedies

Integral to the evidence-based paradigm, whether in the context of crime prevention, policing, sentencing, or correctional treatment, is the notion that decision-makers are rational actors who will take account of the best available information in making public policy. This is not to suggest that, after the release of new scientific evidence, showing that a crime reduction policy works, does not work, or causes harm, government or political leaders will immediately em- brace the evidence and change policies wholesale. It is of course wholly naïve to think that the evidence base on the effectiveness of a particular program or strategy will be the sole influence on policy. There are many considerations involved in the policy-making pro- cess, from more global issues to do with the relative importance of crime in society to particular views or biases held about one approach compared with another.

What is really at issue here is the need to increase the influence of research on policy or, in a manner of speaking, put systematic re- search evidence at center stage in the policy-making (and political) process. In addition to the above considerations, we must also be mindful that the linkages between research and policy are sometimes less than clear, with evaluation influence on policy taking a number of different routes. This is a central finding from the research utilization literature (Tonry & Green, 2003).

As part of this literature, Weiss and her colleagues (2005) have delineated a number of ways that evaluation research can exert influence on policy decisions. The one that is most applicable to evidence-based policy is what the authors refer to as “imposed use.” In this case, state or federal government agencies mandate that for any local program to receive funding it first needs to be evidence- based, which usually comes in the form of a list of best practices that are put together and approved by the agency. One example is the “list of exemplary and promising prevention programs” of the U.S. Department of Education's Safe and Drug-Free Schools program. Programs not on this list are not eligible for government funding. Other research by Weiss et al. (2008) on the application of this list with respect to DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) and other school-based substance abuse prevention programs showed some ad- vantages and shortcomings. In concluding that the imposed use of evaluation is in need of some tinkering, the researchers were also clear in asserting that, “giving evaluation more clout is a worthwhile way to increase the rationality of decision making” (Weiss et al., 2008, p. 29).

This last point is further support for our contention that the move- ment toward rational and evidence-based crime policy is here to stay.

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It does not appear to be yet another fad or fleeting idea in the annals of crime policy. While there remains much to be done to elevate sys- tematic evidence into center stage in the policy-making process, the good news is that this movement is well under way. In England and Wales, there is a correctional services accreditation panel that spec- ifies accredited programs that can be used in prison and probation settings (see Lösel, in press).

As mentioned, one challenge that confronts crime prevention is the worry by politicians that they may be perceived as soft on crime by supporting prevention instead of law and order measures. As Tonry (2011, pp. 139–140) reminds us this view has persisted despite two decades of declining crime rates and increasing imprisonment rates, and is shared by Republicans and Democrats alike. It is rooted in a number of belief systems. One of these involves entrenched, mor- alistic views about crime. Here, crime is seen as evil, with redemption only achievable through extreme state-sanctioned deprivations of liberty, sometimes including even the death penalty. There is no room for prevention. It is held that the general deterrent effect of harsh sanctions will be sufficient to persuade others from embarking on a life of crime.

The most widespread justification for the concern about being seen as soft on crime is that politicians think that citizens are punishment-oriented. Politicians who support “get tough” responses to crime (and rebuke prevention) have long claimed to have the full backing of the general public, and say that it is indeed the public that demands more punitive sanctions such as military-style boot camps, mandatory minimum sentences, and three strikes laws. To be sure, there is public support for “get tough” responses to crime, es- pecially for violent acts. But this support does not reach the levels often claimed and, more importantly, is not as high when punishment is compared to alternatives such as rehabilitation or treatment for offenders or early childhood or youth prevention programs (Cullen et al., 2007). This exaggeration of the punitiveness of the general pub- lic on the part of politicians and others has become known as the “mythical punitive public” (Roberts, 2004). Indeed, new research pro- vides evidence to substantiate that the “punitive public” is mythical rather than actual – that is, citizens are highly supportive of crime prevention and are even willing to pay more in taxes to support these programs compared to other responses (Roberts & Hastings, 2012).

Encouragingly, the evidence-based movement may go some way toward breaking down or tempering the soft-on-crime concern. In- stead of emotions and opinions, facts and evidence are becoming the new currency in federal, state, and local debates about crime policy (Greenwood, 2006). There is an emphasis on taking account of financial costs and benefits in formulating public policies. This is happening for many reasons, including a renewed commitment to science in the U.S. and the dedicated work of various international and national groups, such as the Campbell Collaboration, the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, and the Association for the Advancement of Evidence Based Practice. It may take some time but the slogan “get tough on crime” may one day be replaced with “get smart on crime,” or “reduce crime in the most cost-effective way.” The public should demand that their tax dollars are invested more efficiently.

Yet another challenge that confronts crime prevention, especially developmental and sometimes community approaches, is that the benefits from reduced crime may not be apparent for a number of years – at least until children reach adolescence. This can conflict with the short time horizons of politicians; that is, programs that show results only in the longer term can be unappealing to those who have to face reelection every few years. One potential remedy to this situation is to educate politicians about the many other desirable effects that these prevention programs can produce in the short-term. For example, preschool intellectual enrichment, child skills training, and parent training programs show improvements in school readiness and school performance on the part of the children,

greater employment and educational opportunities for parents, and increased family stability (Farrington & Welsh, 2007; see also Schindler & Yoshikawa, 2012). These short-term benefits alone can translate into substantial cost savings for government (Ludwig & Phillips, 2008).

The problem of the short time horizons of politicians is not restricted to crime policy. Ludwig (2012) suggests applying ideas from other policy areas to crime prevention. For example, in the area of government budgeting, this same problem has led to calls for “‘intergenerational accounting’ – the idea that we should think about government expenditure and revenues as flows over long pe- riods of time, and make clear to the public the impact that different policy decisions will have on these long-term flows” (p. 37). Another suggestion is to expand the definition of Gross Domestic Product in order to take account of non-monetary considerations, such as the “value of a country's stock of environmental quality” (p. 37). When people invest, they are not necessarily looking for quick results but for long-term benefits. Government policymakers should also be able to defer gratification, plan for the future, and think about what legacy they are leaving to the next generation.

A new crime policy

In a recent thought experiment, Durlauf and Nagin (2011) argue that a reduction in the use of imprisonment can lead to a reduction in crime rates. This is possible, they contend, if the cost savings from this policy change are allocated to hot spots policing and other effective policing strategies (see Braga & Weisburd, 2010; Skogan & Frydl, 2004). This is an important piece of scholarship and it has great relevance to U.S. crime policy. For sure, policing and corrections are the two most dominant crime reduction approaches in this coun- try, accounting for $168 billion (in 2006 dollars) or almost four-fifths of annual criminal justice spending (Perry, 2008). Completely absent, however, is any consideration of the benefit that crime prevention holds for lowering crime rates and reducing government spending on criminal justice.

To be fair, the authors make passing reference to the effectiveness of early childhood development programs in reducing criminality (e.g., Piquero et al., 2009). Nonetheless, what makes this an important omission from their study is that what is really needed is a crime pol- icy that strikes a greater balance between prevention and control. Policing may indeed represent a better alternative than the present practice of mass incarceration in the U.S., but it is often another form of crime control, dealing with offenders after the fact. In some respects these arguments are analogous to shifting resources from increasing incarceration rates to correctional treatment without any plan to stop the development of offenders and their subsequent flow into the system. There also needs to be a focus on the front end, without which we surely are just playing at the margins.

Some studies have compared the effectiveness of crime preven- tion and crime control strategies. The most well-known of these was conducted by the RAND Corporation (Greenwood et al., 1998). It assessed the cost-effectiveness (i.e., serious crimes prevented per $1 million spent, using 1993 dollars) of California's three strikes law compared with four prevention and intervention strategies with demonstrated efficacy in reducing crime: a combination of home vis- iting and day care; parent training; graduation incentives; and moni- toring and supervising delinquent youths. Each of these alternatives was based on well-known experiments with small to moderately large sample sizes.

The first step in the modeling process was the estimation of pro- gram costs and crime reduction effectiveness of the four alternative interventions. In order to conduct fair comparisons among these in- terventions and with the three strikes law, three main “penalties” were assigned to the former. These were: (a) targeting: the propor- tion of the population targeted by the program who are likely to

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become involved in criminal behavior (e.g., children of low income, teenage mothers for the home visiting/day care program); (b) decay: the loss of effectiveness after treatment ends; and (c) scale-up: the decrease in program effects when a program is expand- ed statewide (Greenwood et al., 1998, p. 16).

The study found that parent training and graduation incentives were the most cost-effective of the five programs, while home visit- ing/day care was the least cost-effective. The number of serious crimes prevented per $1 million was estimated at: 258 for graduation incentives, 157 for parent training, 72 for delinquent supervision, 60 for the three strikes law, and 11 for home visiting/day care.3 It is important to comment briefly on the poor showing of the home visit- ing/day care program. The small number of crimes prevented per $1 million is attributable to two key factors (a third factor is discussed below): first, the long-term delay in realizing an impact on crime and, second, the high cost of delivering the services, particularly the day care component, which was estimated at $6,000 per child per year over a four-year period.

The other major study – a thought experiment like Durlauf and Nagin's (2011) – was carried out by Donohue and Siegelman (1998). The authors set out to investigate if the “social resources that will be expended a decade or more from now on incarcerating today's youngsters could instead generate roughly comparable levels of crime prevention if they were spent today on the most promising social programs” (1998, p. 31, emphasis in original). These included a range of early prevention programs and the national Job Corps pro- gram, and most of the estimates were based on well-known experi- ments or quasi-experiments with small to large sample sizes.

The first step involved estimating the crime reduction and cost as- sociated with a continuation of the U.S. prison policy of the day. On the basis of a 50% increase in the prison population over a 15-year pe- riod (assumed from the level in December 1993 and trends at the time), it was estimated that this policy would cost $5.6 to $8 billion (in 1993 dollars) and result in a 5% to 15% reduction in crime. This recognizes the incapacitative effect of prisons on active offenders (see DeLisi, 2005). The next steps involved estimating the percentage of the cohort of 3-year-olds who could be served by allocating the saved prison costs (the $5.6 to $8 billion) to the different social pro- grams and then estimating the crime reduction benefits that could be achieved by selected programs under a range of targeting condi- tions (i.e., the worst 6% of delinquents, males only, and young black males only). Two early developmental prevention programs were se- lected: the Perry Preschool project (Schweinhart, Barnes, & Weikart, 1993) and the Syracuse University Family Development Research program (Lally, Mangione, & Honig, 1988). It is at this stage that the authors applied a scaling-up penalty of 50% to each program. This had the result of lowering Perry's crime reduction effectiveness from 40% to 20% and Syracuse's effectiveness from 70% to 35%.

In the final analysis it was found that both prevention programs could achieve reductions in crime that were within the range of what was expected from a continuation of the prison policy of the day (5% to 15%) even if they were allocated the lower bound amount that would have been spent on prisons ($5.6 billion). This was consid- ered the worst case scenario. In the best case scenario, which did not include the scaling-up penalty and allocated the upper bound amount of prison spending ($8 billion), the Perry and Syracuse programs pro- duced crime reductions of 21% and 26%, respectively – better than in- creasing the prison population.

Interestingly, Nagin (2001) reexamined these two studies. While he praised their innovative methods, one of his main concerns was that they failed to consider the full potential benefits of the early pre- vention programs. By its very nature, developmental crime preven- tion is designed to improve individual functioning across multiple domains. Indeed, this is precisely what extant evaluations of the in- cluded programs have shown. But Greenwood et al. and Donohue and Siegelman only considered the benefits following from lower

rates of delinquent and criminal activity. Educational, employment, family, health, and other important benefits were not taken into ac- count, which had the effect of greatly reducing the true economic re- turn to society of these programs. A more recent benefit-cost analysis by Donohue (2009) embraces this view; he concludes that “there is reason to believe that alternatives to incarceration might well be more socially attractive than our current reliance on incarceration as the predominant crime-fighting strategy” (p. 308).

Early crime prevention programs can also reduce serious crimes such as homicide. Ebel, Rivara, Loeber, and Pardini estimated the extent to which the U.S. homicide rate might be reduced by imple- menting early childhood programs on a national basis (see Loeber & Farrington, 2011). They especially focused on the Nurse-Family Partnership (Eckenrode et al., 2010), the Perry Preschool Project (Schweinhart et al., 2005), and Multisystemic Therapy (Sawyer & Borduin, 2011). They estimated the effects of these programs on arrests for violence, combined this information with data from the Pittsburgh Youth Study on the probability of violence being followed by a homicide conviction, and scaled up to national U.S. homicide figures. The effectiveness of the programs was scaled down by half to allow for attenuation of effects from a demonstration project to national implementation (see Welsh et al., 2010).

Based on 2002 figures, it was estimated that these three early in- tervention programs, implemented nationally and consecutively, could prevent one-third of all homicides in the United States. The pro- grams might save 4,200 lives and nearly 80,000 years of potential life lost. Furthermore, they might save almost 225,000 person-years of in- carceration and over $5 billion per year. Therefore, there is great scope for early intervention to prevent not only common crimes but also the most serious and uncommon crimes such as murder. Impor- tantly, these cost savings can be tremendously influential with fiscal conservatives (Greenwood, 2006).

These studies make a strong case for the need to strike a greater balance between crime prevention and crime control. But perhaps the strongest case for a balanced portfolio of prevention and control comes from the real-life policy experiment that is underway in Washington State. In the mid-1990s, the legislature commissioned the Washington State Institute for Public Policy to assess the effec- tiveness and economic efficiency of a range of crime prevention and criminal justice programs that could be implemented in the state (Drake et al., 2009). The researchers referred to their methodological approach as “bottom line” financial analysis, which they considered to parallel the approach used by investors who study rates of return on financial investments. The research began with a literature review of high quality programs. A five-step analytical model was then used to estimate each program's economic contribution.4

What started out as a highly rigorous yet fairly modest policy re- search initiative soon turned into the most comprehensive approach to develop evidence-based crime policy in the U.S. and one revered by other states and even countries (Aldhous, 2007; Greenwood, 2006). Following the institute's first set of reports the legislature au- thorized a number of system-level randomized controlled trials of the most effective and cost-beneficial juvenile and adult intervention programs. The results of these trials helped to refine local practice and service delivery. By 2006, the institute had systematically reviewed and analyzed 571 of the highest-quality evaluations of crime preven- tion and criminal justice programs, estimated the benefits and costs of effective programs, and “projected the degree to which alternative ‘portfolios’ of these programs could affect future prison construction needs, criminal justice costs, and crime rates in Washington” (Aos, Miller, & Drake, 2006, p. 1). This most recent work was commissioned by the legislature to address the projected need for two new state prisons by 2020 and possibly a third by 2030. Based on a moderate- to-aggressive portfolio of evidence-based programs (i.e., $63- $171 million expenditure in the first year), it was found that a signif- icant amount of future prison construction costs could be avoided,

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about $2 billion saved by taxpayers, and crime rates lowered slightly (Aos et al., 2006, p. 16).

In 2007, the Washington State legislature abandoned plans to build one of these two prisons and in its place approved a sizeable spending package ($48 million) on evidence-based crime prevention and intervention programs (Drake et al., 2009). What makes this ini- tiative even more important is that it was a political decision that was made on the basis of scientific research. This research showed that other strategies were more effective than prison and would generate substantial financial savings to theWashington State government and taxpayers.

Building a safer, more sustainable society will require using the best available research evidence, overcoming political barriers, and striking a greater balance between crime prevention and crime con- trol. This is within our reach and the work has already begun. In the most optimistic scenario, what Washington State is doing today, the world will be doing tomorrow. But let us be clear, without a sound focus on crime prevention, any crime policy will not be worth the paper it is written on.

Notes

1. Crime prevention programs are not designed with the intention of excluding justice personnel. Many types of prevention programs, especially those that focus on adolescents, involve justice personnel such as district attorneys, police, or probation of- ficers (see Farrington, in press). In these cases, justice personnel work in close collab- oration with personnel from such areas as education, health care, recreation, and social services.

2. This report was later updated by Sherman et al. (2006). 3. Crimes prevented were not calculated on a per annum basis. Instead they repre-

sent the predicted total effect produced by each program on each California birth co- hort (an estimated 150,000 at-risk children born in California every year).

4. The first step of the model involves estimating each program's effectiveness. Step two looks at whether previously measured program results can be replicated in the state. Step three involves an assessment of program costs, estimated on the basis of what it would cost the Washington State government to implement a similar pro- gram (if the program was not already operating in the state). Step four involves mon- etizing each program's effects on crime. Savings to the criminal justice system and crime victims are estimated. The final step involves calculating the economic contribu- tion of the program, expressed as a benefit-to-cost ratio. Based on this, programs can be judged on their independent and comparative monetary value.

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