We put people in prison for several reasons, right? At least four reasons. One is we think it'll deter crime. We already talked about that. It doesn't really work as well as we thought. There's an incapacitation effect. If you take people who are an active public safety threat off the street, they can't commit crime in the community anymore. That is effective, at least while there's still a public safety threat, probably not when they're 80 or 90. And then there's rehabilitation. There's an opportunity, at least, to use this as an intervention point to put people on a better path, get the mental health care, get them jobs training, you know, other things. We should be increasing the likelihood that anyone is caught if they do something bad. But we don't need to put, like the punishment doesn't need to be draconian, right? But it doesn't need to be to be that you know you can't get a job in the future and you're in prison for three years like

that's how does that help but if you keep doing it then you can ratchet up the consequences right

then you could imagine having it be more severe all right hey everybody it's michael shirmer it's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer show. This is brought to you by, as always, Skeptic Magazine. Hey, here's the latest issue. Go to skeptic.com slash magazine and get it all the way back to, I'll even promote this. We keep our issues in print, volume one, number one from 1992. There he is. Isaac Asima.

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All right.

My guest today is Dr. Jennifer Dolliac.

She's the Executive Vice President of criminal justice at Arnold's Ventures.

Arnold Ventures, A.V., it's called in Houston, Texas, a philanthropy focused on evidence-based policy.

You can see why I like this idea. Before that, she spent over a decade as an economics professor

conducting academic research. She's a leading expert on the

economics of crime and discrimination and a vocal proponent of using rigorous research to inform

policy. She frequently writes for outlets including the Washington Post, Time Magazine, and Bloomberg

opinion, and she hosts the probable causation podcast on law, economics, and crime.

Doliak holds a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, and she now resides in Houston,

Texas. Her new book, here it is, The Science of Second Chances, a Revolution in Criminal

Justice, the Science of second chances.

Jennifer, nice to see you. How are you?

Hi, I'm great. Thanks so much for having me.

Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, no, I love this stuff because it's data-driven,

...