Guide to Calculating Justice-System Marginal Costs.

摘要

In recent years, U.S. government agencies have operated with tight budgets and limited resources, and criminal justice systems are no exception. As a result, interest is growing in data-driven strategies to maintain public safety by maximizing justice investments. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a tool that weighs an investments pros and cons and evaluates a policy's long-run effects on government budgets and society at large. Criminal justice investments include taxpayer costs for law enforcement, courts, corrections (mainly jail and prison), and community corrections (such as probation and parole). This guide instructs policy analysts how to calculate a particular kind of taxpayer costs called marginal costs for use in CBAs of criminal justice programs and policies. The marginal cost is the amount total costs change when a unit of output (such as an arrest or court case) changes. As cost-benefit analysts and budget officials know, any detailed discussion about government costs requires an understanding of marginal costs because these are the costs that policy changes affect. Although obtaining government budget information might be simple, accurately calculating marginal taxpayer costs is challenging, because the specific type of cost data required for CBA is sometimes not readily available. Using marginal costs to measure a programs impact on taxpayers is important, but it is just one step in a CBA. A cost-benefit analysis aims to measure the net benefit to society, but this guide covers only costs to taxpayers and not societal costs of crime, which include fear of crime, avoidance costs, and emotional and physical harm to victims. (For more information on societal costs and other steps of CBA such as conducting a sensitivity analysis, and reporting CBA results, go to cbkb.org/toolkit.)