Public Choice Perspectives on Crime and Punishment Daniel J. D’Amico Mises Academy: The American Prison State, Lecture 4

What is, is efficient… “Many blacks have their lives disrupted by the criminal justice system, but the lives and property of many blacks are also protected by that same system.  Looking at only the cost of imprisonment seems a very strange way to answer the question of whether we should change the current system (2009).”

Are prisons public goods or public bads?

Commons Problems “[A] senior level of government may in part shift the costs of providing prison services from one sentencing jurisdiction onto another via prison financing. Thus the cost of delivery does not fully constrain the local demand for confinement. The tendency to prison overcrowding in the federal part of the system and to underbuilding in the local part follows directly (Avio, 2003 p. 16).”

Rent Seeking and Capture Rent Seeking - spending real resources to secure political profits rather than producing real value. Capture: Siphoning monopoly profits for private interests.

Politics as Exchange Fiscal spending creates new populations who collectively act to perpetuate spending. Long run trends toward deficit and debasement.

Irrational and Expressive Voting

Rules, Discretion and Constitutional Constraint