Crime rates have declined in the 1990s, suggesting some benefit from the expenditure, yet crime stubbornly remains three times higher than 30 years ago, according to FBI statistics. These data imply a substantial decline in the productivity of law-enforcement bureaucracies.
Big government is no more likely to be the answer to crime than to any other problem.
The root solution for crime is a set of institutions that get incentives right. Bruce Benson, professor of economics at Florida State University, pursues this logic brilliantly. Benson is a veteran researcher on crime and law, and in this volume he integrates a sprawling literature in a way that changes the whole discussion. The book works on two distinct levels. First, it provides nearly encyclopedic coverage of private techniques in criminal justice that range from medieval Anglo-Saxon days to contracting out of prisons today.