Below are two excerpts from a series of articles in Wilson Quarterly on Prison reform:
“With effective programs, we could reduce the number of repeat offenders by nearly 100,000. We could do even better if these efforts were linked to improved services in teh community upon release. Such efforts would pay for themselves by reducing future criminal justice and corrections cost. Economist Mark A. Cohen and criminologist Alex Piquero found in a recent study that a high-risk youth who become a chronic offender costs society between $4.2 and $7.2 million, principally in police and court outlays, property losses, and medical care. We either pay now or pay later–and we pay a lot more later.”
- Joan Petersilia, “Beyond the Prison Bubble,” Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2011.
“Unserved warrants tend not to pile up in jurisdictions with commercial bondsmen. In those places, the bail bond agent is on the hook for the bond and thus has a strong incentive to bring those who jump bail to justice.”
- Alex Tabarrok, “The Bounty Hunter’s Pursuit of Justice,” Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2011.
How important is credit?
December 22, 2008 in Economics - General | No comments
“Adequate credit is to trade what altitude is to aircraft; without it, the odds of coming to grief over preilous commercial terrain are great. All merchant enterprises sooner or later lose cargoes or encounter soft markets. Without ample capital reserves and the ability to borrow at low rates of interest, bankruptcy is inevitable.”
~ William Bernstein (2008) on the importance of credit to the East India Company, in A Splendid Exchange.
Tags: Books, Quotations