For example, were betraying that basic principle. At the same time, the certainty part of this is really lacking, so it is stunning that under half of Violent Crimes in the United States are cleared. That is lead to an arrest. Or some other form of resolution. And for Something Like burglaries its more like 15 . It means 85 of burglaries just kind of disappear in terms of some kind of resolution. If you think about someone thinking about attempting to make a burglary, the fact only one out of seven cases is anyone brought to justice, that, unfortunately, encourages the burglaries in a way that i think prison sentences, or the length of prison sentence, dont do much to offset. So now you might think, theres not much what we can do, it is what it is, burglaries are hard to solve and Violent Crime is hard to solve. The evidence is also very compels there is lots we can do. So as an example, jason furman mentioned empirical evidence suggests there is a positive return to police presence. Part of the part of the mechanism in terms of deterring crime, part of the mechanism there is that the evidence despite some misleading evidence from the famous kansas city study, suggests that things like response times do matter includes in robberies and burgla burglaries. Interesting evidence from manchester in the uk suggesting exactly that, that response times matter. And its also the case that you may all remember the bat computer where batman and robin thought they could predict individual crimes. Well, thats becomes a reality. For example, in milan, the police there use something called key crime which predicts individual criminal behavior in the future and individual targets and has been shown to be quite effective. Those are the kinded of investments that can matter. And that were not making sufficiently. Then final point in terms of what the evidence suggests and where there are returns. The recidivism rate is unacceptably high. Especially for those who have Behavioral Health and Substance Abuse issues which are a significant share of those who are exiting incarceration and the evidence strongly suggests that providing targeted health care and other social support to those people can pay off. We still need better evidence, but the evidence is strongly suggestive. For example, there was a program in michigan that effectively cut the recidivism rate in half among people who have those kinds of issues. One of the ill just put in a quick plug for the Affordable Care act, one of the benefits of the expanded Medicaid Programs in many states is that those people are qualifying for the type of help that they need and in terms of making sure that we dont waste lives, theres probably no better intervention than making sure someone whos already started to go down the wrong path doesnt repeat the mistake in the future. Thank you. The entire business sector on this panel, its a heavyweight Valerie Jarrett in her introduction made the point, business is clearly think about this a lot, but its been hard sometimes for them to speak out. What are the hidden impacts of the criminal Justice System on the Business World and why does a Business Leader like you feel the need to speak out . So im going to entirely dodge that question because i dont feel like im sorry. Im going to entirely not entirely, im going to partially dodge the question because i feel im here more as a philanthropist than as a businessperson, but ill take a stab at it. I think as a businessperson, im in Investment Management business, and our business is largely centered around evaluating situations, analyzing things, using the best data and evidence an logic to get to a specific outcome. And i think just to build on what peter said, the thing that is really misses from this entire complex is the use of evidence, data and logic in a stated goal that were trying to achieve. I think i dont think it can be overstated. This is really truly a landmark paper that jason and his team put together. To embody this that points really in one direction. What he did that was most valuable in addition to introducing all the data is creating a framework from soup to nuts as to how we can improve the system. As a philanthropist, the way i got into this was actually at an aei conference. It shouldnt surprise people that folks like aei are committed to humanity and social justice and good just like people on the other end of the spectrum. I was there and at this aei conference. I wandered into a room on criminal justice. Something i didnt really know anything about. There was corkor booker sitting behind mike lee and john cornyn. Had democrats and republicans. I struck first, wow, this is great, this is a bipartisan issue. The other thing that jumped out at me was some of the data introduced there. This is as somebody whos personally very engaged in education reform, this is a sister issue to that. I mean, if we want to close down this, as valerie pointed out, the highway from education to prison highway, weve got to start with our Education System. And we need to apply the same sorts of evidence, data and logic to education and to get kids, particularly black and hispanic kids from poor communities that arent graduating from college. Ill just close saying that this is really shocking. The tate to i learned. Which is the large per scentagef people, in the black community, if you didnt graduate from prison, your likelihood sorry, if you didnt graduate from high school, rather, your like liehood not of being in prison at some point but being in prison now is over 30 and if you didnt graduate from high school, your likelihood of being in prison at some point is over 60 . I think taken in total, looking at reforming the criminal Justice System, we also need to look at the Education System and really think about, how do we bring back the sort of civility and honest discourse based on facts and compassion and real care for our citizens and for our communities and for our country . And, you know, as opposed to what were seeing right now in the, sometimes in the extremes of the political discussion thats going on. Thank you. And i really recommend reading of course youre going to read this report. One of the most powerful things i think this report does is look at the collateral damage, if youre someone making a case that prison works and youre locking up bad guys, this really focuses not just on the effects to those people and how they got into prison, but their children, their families, the wider community. Access to public housing, occupational licenses. Stunning statistic after stunning statistic. Help us understand the collateral costs on, you know, so much larger groups of people than just the prisoners, themselves. Those incarcerated. Sure. Thank you. Weve been looking at this question from the perspective of the impact on opportunity that our criminal Justice System policies have levied and how those policies exacerbated existing inequality. Overcriminalization, mass incarceration have been major drivers of unequinequality in t country, economic inequality, as well as a racial inequality. Theres a study that says between 1980 and 2004, but for mass incarceration, the poverty rate would have dropped 20 . The impact of all of this has been alluded to really has Ripple Effects across our country and the impact is staggering. The report, our discussions, have illustrated the impact of people of color. People of color make up more than 60 of prison population despite making up approximately 39 or 40 of the u. S. Population. And, you know, theres a statistic that the report is fantastic for really putting out the scope of the problem, but theres this statistic or impact thats not often talked about. Thats the impact on women. Africanamerican women are more likely than women of other races to go to prison during their lifetimes and are significantly overrepresented in prisons and jails. Inmates in prisons are nearly three times more likely and those who are in jails four times more likely to report a disability than the general population. So the effects of all of these policies really do ripple across all our communities and impact a wide variety of individuals. And what does this all mean . Well, one in three americans have a criminal record. And even a minor offense, misdemeanor, can lead to a lifelong set of consequences both in employment opportunities, educational opportunities, and housing. And we know that 60 of folks within the first year are not fortunate enough to get employment because of these barriers. Those that are lucky enough to get employment often get jobs in lowwage occupations. And also maybe saddled with fees and fines that weve also talked about. In some ways criminalizing pover poverty. Importantly, we found that this doesnt just impact folks with criminal records. It impacts their families, their children and center for American Progress put out a report recently with a new number, shockingly that one in two American Children have at least one parent with a criminal record. Which is a staggering number. And if you consider the impacts that a criminal record has on the parent, the Ripple Effect that has on the children is palpable. Income obviously is eliminated for the child and household. S. N. A. P. Benefits no longer available for those who have felony drug convictions, thereby depriving families of nutritional opportunities as well as other means of stability and livelihood. Also while income is important, savings are also important for Financial Stability and obviously if youre not able to get a job upon release from prison, youre going to cut into your ability to save money. All this is boll tstered by a report today, kids count report, which focuses on the impact of all these policies on children who are incarcerated, 5 million kids who are incarcerated. There are things we can do to solve this including making sure we adopt fair housing and fair Employment Practices so we dont blanketly excluding folks from opportunit opportunity. Pennsylvania is taking the lead proposing that we seal criminal records automatically under certain circumstances so criminal records arent at issue either in the employment process or in the housing process or in many other processes that become barriers for folks with criminal records. Weve received seen a lot of bipartisan support for that. Thank you very much. And a question to sort of focus on the politics, trying to introduce some rigor on the policies of this. When you look at the figure of 46,000 occupational 46,000 rules and regulations, limited occupations, that tells you that politicians have very frequently felt the need to keep people safe by doing things that were clearly going to limit employment. There is tremendous dezaire to keep voters feeling safe. How do you use economics to tackle this clearly grotesquely inefficient prison population system prison sort of industry, while still making people feel safe . Yeah, so one of the core t tenents of economics is people respond to incentives. Theres a wheel school of legal thought trying to bring that concept into law and policy. One, if legislators and policymakers arent thinking about the incentives their laws are creating, this often leads to unintended consequences. Secondly, in order to prevent that from happening when people are putting policies together, we need to very clearly be thinking about what types of incentives we create. This concept plays itself out over and over and over again in our criminal Justice System. There are incentives baked into the way that federal laws work, state laws work and local practices operate. That incentivize mass incarceration. And one of the most common examples of this, so Police Departments are they measure success through the number of arrests. Prosecutors measure success through the number of convictions and how many people they are sending away to prison and for how long theyre sending them. One of the examples in terms of the federal level is a 1994 crime bill. Which weve all been hearing about on the campaign trail. One of the parts that we might not have heard as much about is the part that gave states 12. 5 billion to construct additional prisons if they passed laws that increased prison terms. So in response, over 28 states actually changed their laws and applied for funding. And then between 1994 and 2008, the prison population doubled. So to truly end mass incarceration, these types of incentives have to be changed. And heres where the federal government can play a very large role. Of course states and localities need to also change their laws but just like in the 1990s when the federal government incentivized more incarceration, it can similarly use its federal grants to reduce mass incarceration. So today there are 3. 8 billion that go out to the federal government from states and cities. Most of these funds largely run on autopilot. All of that should be taken, given to states to reward states that one, reduce crime, and two, reduce incarceration. Youre giving states the right incentives while giving them the freedom to allow to choose how to get there and drawing on the comments of dan and peter, those are the goals were trying to get in terms of what works to get there. So weve run the numbers on this particular proposal which we call the reverse mass incarceration act. Which is basically a reverse of the 94 crime bill. This proposal could cut the National Prison population by 20 , save 40 billion and still keep crime down. Thats one example of how this could be applied. Well, thank you very much for that opening round. It seems to me the overarching theme of the work going on at the moment, youre not asking the country to completely abandon its goals. The goals dont have to change. Its to keep the country safe, deter crime, puni isish people need to be punished. The Current System was not chosen, it happened by accident, the more you do the research, the more you see theres these unintended consequences vastly inefficient systems sort of creating this rats nest of bad policy. Explain to us, theres probably a bias towards it of economics in this room, but explain why economics is unusually useful both in providing rigor and cutting through partisan politics on it. We can have the same ago bigs. Do it in a smarter way. Its not about smartness on crime or toughness on crime. Its about being tougher. I think for someone like me, i didnt set out to become a criminal justice expert. This shows up in in all the things people say they care about in the economy. So as jason mentioned, the Labor Force Participation rate is not what people think it should be. This feeds into the inability of people who have records to get jobs and they drop out of the labor force. Poverty. Persistent poverty is an important issue for people to deal with. Theres a lot of discussion about it. You look inside it, what do you mi find . People who arent working. Families who dont stay together. You find single mothers trying to do this on their own. That feeds into the issue. Thats exactly the phenomena we see. State budgets a really exciting topic for most people. Theyre stretched tremendously. You look inside of it, prison populations are a big chunk of that. So all roads lead to this issue then you get the really striking results. Number one, you can make a lot of progress on the Labor Force Participation. The antipoverty programs. The relief on state budgets. Without sacrificing the safety of the public. Now, thats a really rare Public Policy moment. Usually, id like to do these things, but man, we might have to worry over here on the safety front. Thats why, again, this is such a unique moment. On the bipartisanship, i think part of whats gone on is many republicans, conservatives, sort of got drawn into this for the fact that theyre skeptical that the government can do anything well. Why do we believe they imprison people well, and they dont seem to, and it costs a lot of money, we can save them money. Why dont we do that . It really is a unique situation at the moment. Id say two things. One, as was earlier pointed out, at heart of economics is incentives and a big part of the, you know, apparent benefit of longer prison sentences, for example, is that it would deter crime. The fact of the matter is it doesnt work. And so fundamentally, we need to change because i mean, imagine we had a tax policy that was designed to create more businesses and looked and found it yet there was another approach that did work. The point you were making is exactly right. To say that you are concerned about incarceration and the length of prison sentences does not mean youre soft on crime. In fact, if anything, the opposite. Heres an example where being warmhearted can also be very much hard headed because by investing in, again, detecting and sort of the not the severity, but making sure that people who commit crimes do pay a consequence, youre going to be much more effective and secondly, being kind kinder to those who do go astray helpedhelp s to prevent them from coming criminals again. This is not just airy fairy lets be nice to people. This is hardheaded empiricallydriven commonsensical reforms that also makes the people directly affected their lives better off. Just before i turn to the oath e panelists, youve written interesting things about the fact that actually criminals sometimes are rational actors and economists look at rational decisions that people make and they apply discount effects and all of these things and if you give people the choice of immediate shortterm punishment for, say, going back on drugs when theyre supposed to have done a deal with the courts to stay off drugs as opposed to saying well lock you up, instead of for ten years well lock you up for 20 years. People respond to those different punishments very differently. Can you tell us briefly about how that works. The example is project hope from hawaii, a randomized experiment, the Gold Standard of evidence, and having the certainty of not only being tested regularly but having a, you know, a known penalty if you were f