Evidence Over Intuition

Over the past decade or so, the field of criminal justice reform has seemed to tilt on its axis. Thanks in no small part to Black Lives Matter, what had been for many years a fairly technocratic, under-the-radar area of endeavor became the stuff of front-page news — and yet another battleground in the culture wars that have consumed so much of American life.

As the environment became more and more politicized, many intellectuals effectively turned themselves into cheerleaders, signing on to support either Team Social Justice or Team Tough-on-Crime, no matter the issue at hand. Others were cowed into a dull silence, wary of sticking their heads above the parapet to voice their real opinions on hot-button topics. Our public discourse has been much impoverished as a result.

Against this backdrop, economist Jennifer Doleac has been a one-woman conversation starter.  She is the rare public thinker with the courage to speak her convictions, come what may.

Of course, speaking your truth doesn’t always make you friends. In 2022, when she was a professor at Texas A&M, Doleac found herself in the eye of the storm when she started collecting and publicizing #MeToo allegations of abuse and harassment from female economists.

The following year, when Doleac was named senior vice president at Arnold Ventures, one of the largest funders of criminal justice research in the country, left-wing activists protested her appointment, upset that she had conducted research suggesting that the widespread availability of naloxone has had some unintended negative impacts. Sociologist Alex Vitale, the author of “The End of Policing” and a member of Zohran Mamdani’s transition committee, issued a stinging public denunciation: “She has been unwilling to engage with those who disagree with her views, has no standing in the communities most affected by policing and incarceration, and is deeply distrusted by most of my intellectual and political colleagues.” (Full disclosure: Vital City has received several grants from Arnold Ventures.)

Upon landing at Arnold, Doleac quickly found herself enmeshed in yet more controversy.  When she publicly criticized a study of college-in-prison programs conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice for its methodological weakness, she drew a strong rebuke from Vera’s president, Nick Turner: “By privileging a rigid research standard and creating divisions over methodological differences, Doleac is giving comfort to the opponents of reform.”

Doleac doesn’t address any of these incidents in detail in her new book, “The Science of Second Chances: A Revolution in Criminal Justice” (Macmillan), but neither does she seek to avoid contentious debates. Instead, she comes out swinging, amply demonstrating that she is still willing to call ’em like she sees ’em.  “Good research doesn’t always tell us what we want to hear,” she announces.

In “The Science of Second Chances,” Doleac makes the case that instead of defaulting to locking people up, the criminal justice system should err on the side of leniency, giving those who have committed offenses multiple opportunities to get their lives back on track.  While her thesis would seem a run-of-the-mill, left-wing argument, Doleac’s commitment to data means that she is not content to just parrot standard-issue Democratic talking points.  Indeed, over the course of her book, Doleac throws cold water on a host of ideas and initiatives embraced by progressives. She suggests that efforts to “ban the box,” which limit the ability of employers to uncover the criminal histories of job applicants, have backfired, making things worse for the intended beneficiaries. She dismisses the evidence on gun violence interrupters as “thin” and writes positively about the crime-fighting possibilities of DNA databases and electronic monitoring devices. She avers that incarceration is sometimes effective at reducing reoffending, citing the example of Norway, where prisons take rehabilitation much more seriously than they do in the United States. The list goes on.

But Doleac is nothing if not an equal opportunity truth-teller. Throughout “The Science of Second Chances,” she takes up many causes that will no doubt vex conservatives, arguing — again, rooted in research findings — that we should spend more money on early education, health care, summer jobs for kids, cognitive behavioral therapy and direct cash transfers to people coming out of prison, among other things.

In issuing all of these judgments, Doleac is trying to make a larger point: “We need to let go of trusting our intuition — which often leads us astray — over evidence on what is effective in practice.”

Doleac believes deeply in the power of social science.  She cites dozens of studies to support her arguments and goes out of her way to credit a myriad of researchers by name. In doing so, “The Science of Second Chances” essentially functions as a literature review for lay readers. Instead of pursuing esoteric questions of interest only to a narrow band of her peers, one of our most prominent criminal justice researchers has taken the time to distill the wisdom of her field for the general public. Every academic discipline should be so lucky. (Academics will note that Doleac exhibits a strong preference for the kinds of “causal research” conducted by economists over other forms of knowledge. Qualitative research and studies conducted by criminologists rarely feature in “The Science of Second Chances.”)

There are, of course, limits to what social science can tell us. (Indeed, Vital City devoted an entire issue to this topic.) Much, perhaps most, of what government does has never been subjected to rigorous evaluation. Perverse incentives constrain the choices of researchers, limiting the types of questions that get answered and the types of studies that get published. Government officials operate on a much faster time clock than academic researchers, who typically require years to complete their work. And our messy, complicated world often doesn’t lend itself to randomized trials or even the kind of natural experiments that Doleac highlights throughout her book. Sometimes we really do need to trust our intuition — in many cases, it is all we have to go on.

Still, for all its limitations, I would much prefer to live in the world that Doleac imagines, where evidence-based policymaking is the norm, rather than the alternative. In general, anecdotes and ideology are good for storytelling but bad for policy.  On the right, these forces tend to encourage an instinct to “back the blue,” come hell or high water.  On the left, they lead to a distrust of the “carceral state” in almost every circumstance.

This kind of black-and-white thinking isn’t a very accurate reflection of the world — in real life, law enforcement isn’t always trustworthy and the coercive authority of government is often a force for good — but it does offer the benefit of simplicity. The science-based approach to criminal justice reform that Doleac advocates offers no such comfort. “The world is complicated, and uncomfortable trade-offs are inevitable,” she declares.

Epistemic humility is a recurring theme in “The Science of Second Chances.” Notwithstanding all of the confident declarations made by politicians and advocates that “we know what works,” the truth is that we don’t really know how to prevent crime without spending an exorbitant amount of money or significantly eroding the kinds of freedoms that make life worth living.  “Most good ideas we try won’t work,” Doleac writes. Even the programs that Doleac views approvingly tend to have rather modest effect sizes. While academics might get excited about a 10% reduction in recidivism, the general public is unlikely to share their enthusiasm.

Criminologist Joan Petersilia once offered the following assessment of the state of criminal justice research: “The data now supports the mantra that ‘some things work for some people, some of the time, in some settings.’ It’s not as catchy as ‘nothing works’ or ‘everything works,’ but it is a truer and more nuanced understanding.” “The Science of Second Chances” is a powerful affirmation of Petersilia’s appraisal.

Over the past decade, Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” has become a staple of college curricula, assigned in more than 4,000 classes since 2012. A despairing look at enduring racial disparities in the criminal justice system, “The New Jim Crow” literally encourages readers to see the world in black and white. Perhaps as a result, it has sparked a passionate response, encouraging many young people to dedicate their lives to criminal justice reform.

With its cool presentation and commitment to evidence, “The Science of Second Chances” is unlikely to engender such enthusiasm — moderates, data nerds and policy wonks rarely take to the barricades — but that doesn’t make it any less valuable. Indeed, with any luck, it too will become required reading on college campuses, helping readers develop a more nuanced perspective on criminal justice reform and underlining just how difficult it is to achieve solutions to the public safety problems that continue to plague us.