This article by Cecilia Klingele of the University of Wisconsin Law School in the Notre Dame Law Review cautions against over-reliance on metrics and cost-benefit analyses within the criminal justice system, as she writes:
“Talk of data and efficiencies and actuarial tools is cool and detached, and can rise
above some of the heated partisan rancor that has so long defined and complicated
conversations about criminal justice. The problem is that depersonalization
is just that. It divorces even those implementing reform from
confronting the underlying reason why reform is necessary: not because
prison is costly, but because prisons are filled with too many people locked in
cages for years at a time, not infrequently for crimes that only a few short
decades ago would have gone unpunished or drawn a substantially less severe
sentence. That is an uncomfortable truth. By talking about money and data,
many reformers hope to avoid these hard conversations and jump straight to
solving the perceived problems of an overly harsh and insufficiently rehabilitative
criminal justice system. But there are no shortcuts to culture change.”
Click here for the full article.
