Education incentive schemes: the effects of scrapping the EMA

Does prison work?

A common approach in economic analysis is to assume that people act rationally, basing their decisions on a weighing-up of the benefits and costs of an action. To what extent does this approach help us to understand whether prison works in tackling crime? Kevin Albertson of Manchester Metropolitan University investigates

Mass imprisonment has been the most thoroughly implemented US government social programme of recent times. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, as of October 2013 the USA imprisoned 716 per 100,000 of her citizens. This is the highest imprisonment rate in the world.

However, the increase in imprisonment in the UK since 1995 has outpaced that of the USA to the point where England and Wales have the highest per capita prison population in western Europe: 148 per 100,000 as of September 2013. This does not mean that the UK imprisons a greater number of people than the USA, but rather that the imprisonment rate has increased more quickly.