Executive Summary

• Burglars face expected punishment of only six days since burglars as a group spend only six days in prison for each burglary committed.
• Thus a rational criminal will consider a burglary profitable if the stolen goods are worth more than six days behind bars.
• The expected punishment for murder is 2.1 years, for rape 93 days, for robbery 36 days and for aggravated assault 11 days.
• For the four crimes of violence and burglary, taken as a whole, expected punishment is only 17 days.

Crime increases when expected punishment declines. Between 1950 and 1980, expected punishment for crimes of violence and burglary declined more-or-less continuously from seven weeks to 10 days " an 80 percent decline " and the serious crime rate more than quadrupled during those years. In the 1980s, expected punishment began to increase, accompanied by the leveling off and then a decline in the serious crime rate. Still, the probability of punishment remains far below what it was through the 1950s.

The experience of our two most populous states " California and Texas " confirms the negative association between crime and expected punishment.

• During the 1980s, California increased its prison population at a rate faster than the nation and experienced a decline in serious crime relative to that of the nation.
• Texas, meanwhile, lagged in the growth of its prison population and its rate of serious crime shot up relative to that of the nation.
• The opposite has occurred during the 1990s, as Texas has enjoyed a 21 percent decline in serious crime while sharply increasing its prison population to the highest rate in the nation.
• During the same period, the growth in California’s prison population has leveled off and now trails the national average, and California has made no progress against serious crime.

The cost of building and maintaining prisons is high, but studies indicate that the cost to society of not doing so is even higher. Rising prison costs can be reduced by privatizing prison construction and operation, as well as by employing prisoners in both state and private enterprise jobs.