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James Wilson questions whether society gets as much from universities as it does from prisons

By Douglas A. Berman

Thanks to this great post at Grits, I saw this notable op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by James Q. Wilson, headlined "Do the time, lower the crime."  Scott does a great job in his post highlighting "a few of the overstatements and obfuscations" in Wilson's criticisms of study by the Pew Center on the States regarding America's high incarceration rate.  Rather than jump on the criticism bandwagon, let me quote a few notable paragraphs from the long Wilson op-ed that highlight there is both good and bad in Wilson's observations about the Pew research:You cannot make an argument about the cost of prisons without taking into account the benefit of prisons. The Pew report makes no effort to do this. Instead, it argues that spending on prisons may be crowding out spending on education...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 31, 2008 (boomark / email).