I still find myself amazed that decades of cost-benefit analyses of crim justice policy in econ, criminology and other fields never seriously wrestled w opportunity cost.

If $1 spent on, say, prison seemed to cut crime by $1.05, good! Never asked where else that $1 cld've gone.

Those decades of work never seriously wrestled with social cost either, not the quantitative stuff anyway.

The $1 in cost was always the fiscal cost--the actual govt spending. The SOCIAL cost? Acknowledged as uncountable (maybe), and then mostly ignored.

There's a lot to unpack in all that. It reflects how deeply entrenched are our views that prison, and law enforcement more broadly, is simply the default.

(Similarly, to the extent there was any opportunity cost, it was mostly intra-crim justice ("prison vs police").)

And the focus on fiscal costs reflects the lived experiences of those DOING the cost-benefit analysis, for whom fiscal costs WERE the costs.

I pay taxes, and could be a crime victim, but I'm not assaulted by the police. And I'm the sort of person who does the cost-benefit work.

Anyway, nothing prompted this thread. It's just genuinely the fact that I can be standing in my kitchen, cleaning the dishes (like tonight), and suddenly get stuck by how an entire cost-benefit literature seemed to just... go astray.