Are high incarceration rates making our communities safer?

Putting individuals convicted of crimes, especially violent crimes, in prison is thought to make the rest of us safer. But how much safety does all this imprisonment actually buy us? A study I recently published with colleagues shows the answer is very little, especially in the long-term.

eli whitney was an american inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. this was one of the key inventions of the industrial revolution and shaped the economy of the antebellum south.