Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers.

I'm your host, Andrew He.

Let's say, we want to make crime go away.

Lesson it anyway.

Meaningfully reduce the amount of violent crime, if not larceny and whatnot.

You would think it would make sense to talk to a criminologist.

Someone who gets into the minds of criminals comes up with a theory on what precipitates crime and works from there.

Or, or you could talk to

an economist. Weirdly, the economist doesn't particularly need to have a theory of what causes

crime, whether it's nurture or nature or low-income precipitating opportunities or whatever,

because the economist is thinking empirically, what policies work and which do not.

We can speculate as to why something works or doesn't, but what we really need to figure out

is what works and what costs too much. They just need to look at the end result and the

data. Today, we're going to tackle prison and crime, but we're not going to look at it from the

perspective of cops, criminals, or legislators. We're going to look at it through the lens of

empirical data. We are going to tackle crime like an economist.

Enjoy.

My guest today is Jennifer Doliac.

She is the executive vice president at Arnold Ventures in charge of criminal justice

and the author of the new book, The Science of Second

Chances, A Revolution in Criminal Justice, which you can find on Amazon and various websites,

and I make it easy for you. You can find any book we discuss in this program by going to

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