Cost Benefit Analysis and Crime Control (Urban Institute Press) - Softcover

Roman, John; Dunworth, Terry; Marsh, Kevin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0877667667 ISBN 13: 9780877667667

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010

Synopsis

Criminal justice programs, to be adopted in today's climate, need demonstrate not only efficacy but return on tax dollars invested. Cost-benefit analysis, the economist's tool for determining the price of outcomes, yields a single metric that allows different interventions to be compared directly. Yet CBA is difficult, even controversial, to apply to crime control, as it involves placing monetary value on intangibles such as pain, suffering, well-being, and human life. Cost-Benefit Analysis and Crime Control guides researchers through cost collection, design of bias-free studies, measurement of effects, approaches to estimating program benefits, and methods for combining the elements into a unified analysis

About this title

About the Author:

John K. Roman is a senior research associate in the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute where his research focuses on evaluations of innovative crime control policies and justice programs. He is also the executive director of the District of Columbia Crime Policy Institute where he directs research on crime and justice matters on behalf of the Executive Office of the Mayor. Dr. Roman is directing studies of the use of DNA to aid law enforcement investigations, rates of wrongful conviction, prisoner reentry, drug courts, and the social benefit of informal social controls of postal carriers. He is coeditor with Jeffrey A. Butts of Juvenile Drug Courts and Teen Substance Abuse (Urban Institute Press, 2004) and has authored dozens of scholarly articles and book chapters. Dr. Roman also serves as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania and an affiliated professor at Georgetown University.

Terence Dunworth, Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute, is past director of the UI s Justice Policy Center. Dr. Dunworth, formerly managing vice president of Abt Associates Inc. s Law and Public Policy Area, has directed evaluations of many national programs, including the Byrne Formula Grant Program, the Weed and Seed program, and the Youth Firearms Violence Initiative. Before joining Abt Associates, he was senior operations research specialist in the Social Policy Department at RAND. He also has served as a consultant to, among others, the World Bank and the states of California and Michigan for criminal justice programs and planning. Dr. Dunworth earned his Ph.D. in political science fromMichigan State University.

Kevin Marsh is a director and chief economist at the Matrix Knowledge Group, with responsibility for economic evaluations of public policy, in particular criminal justice and public health interventions. He completed his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Bath. Dr. Marsh joined Matrix in 2003 following a year at the Social Disadvantage Research Centre at Oxford University. His research interests are in methods for the economic evaluations of public policy. He has undertaken economic evaluations on behalf of European and UK-based clients including the European Commission, the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Health, and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. He is an active member of the Campbell and Cochrane Economic Methods Group.

Review:

While serving as commissioner of police in New York City, and later as chief of police in Los Angeles, I was occasionally asked by public officials to provide information about the cost effectiveness of law enforcement programs implemented by the departments. While we could provide meaningful statistics, including information about demonstrated and significant drops in criminal activity, a more detailed evaluation of the economic impact of crime prevention programs was hampered by the lack of detailed research and credible approaches for cost-benefit analysis. This compendium of the latest work and studies being done in the area of crime prevention CBA is an excellent resource for policymakers and law enforcement leaders alike. It is my hope that this volume spurs further thoughtful research into this important area. --William J. Bratton, Chairman, Kroll Inc.

John Roman, Terence Dunworth, and Kevin Marsh have assembled an impressive group of authors to tackle the problems inherent in conducting cost-benefit analysis. Given the extraordinary level of expenditure for criminal justice in this country--at a time when government officials are looking for every possible place to cut funding--it behooves us to have the best information available to guide decisions. This thorough and eminently readable approach, which covers the history of CBA, an honest assessment of the complexity of the process, and the difficult challenges involved in changing the process of decisionmaking, is bound to be useful to policymakers as well as to researchers in government agencies whose work informs so many criminal justice policy decisions. --Joan C. Weiss, Executive Director, Justice Research and Statistics Association

Cost-benefit analysis is here to stay in criminology and criminal justice. It provides a framework that can be a tremendous aid to decisionmaking for policy and practice. In bringing together the work of leading international experts, Roman, Dunworth, and Marsh have made an important and lasting contribution. --Graham Farrell, Senior Research Fellow and Professor, Simon Fraser University; Professor of Criminology and Director of the Midlands Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, Loughborough University

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0877667667
• ISBN 13: 9780877667667
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250