Italian Mass Pardons

According to the WSJ two years ago Italy's prison system, which was only designed to hold 43,000 prisoners had 60,000. The Italian government decided to simply release 1/3 of the prisoners (approx 27,000 so far). One law lopped 3 years off of (most) all sentences, while another law allowed anyone with less than 3 year sentences to take community service instead. Within months bank robberies increased 20% as did kidnappings, fraud, computer crimes, arson, and pursesnatchings. Additionally, the WSJ argues that Italy's system is influenced by the Catholic church and the idea of forgiveness. Capital punishment is not used and life sentences are rare. Each defendant is given two appeals (including traffic tickets). The backlog of cases is so long that many statute of limitations expire before a final verdict is reached. Therefore, freeing prisoners to avoid costs of imprisonment added to the costs (explicit and opportunity) to the judicial system.

Judges' Pay

Bills are pending in the House and Senate (March 14, 2008) to increase Federal judges pay by 30%. Federal trial judges earn no more than first-year lawyers at top private firms according to Justice Thomas. Consequently, he argued that there is a resulting loss in quality of the judges due to this pay gap. On March 23, 2008 George Will published a commentary on the low relative pay of judges pointing out that decreasing the gap would cost 0.004% of the Federal budget. Also, 50 years ago about 65% of Federal judges came from the private sector while now only 40% do.

The argument that low pay relative to jobs that act as close substitutes will have an adverse effect on quality. The question becomes what exactly is judicial quality? Is it speed of trials, few appeals, minimal reversals? If it is a basic depth of knowledge, then couldn't assessment testing guarantee minimum quality standards? What is judicial quality, how does it interact with wage, and are their nonwage approaches to improving quality?

Felons' Voting

Policies differ state-to-state, but many states restrict the voting privileges of released felons. The states of Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Virginia, and Wyoming each have between 5% and 9% of the adult populations that cannot vote due to felony convictions (WSJ, March 31, 2008). Recently, Florida has restored voting rights to 75,000 citizens. Maine and Vermont not only do not restrict voting of released felons, but allow incarcerated felons vote. The Wall Street Journal reports that 5.3 million Americans are unable to vote because of such laws. Ignoring the moral and political discussion that arises what impact would such restrictions have on the criminal justice system?

Cuba

Under the new political leadership of Raul Castro Cuba is beginning to reform. Two examples of such changes include allowing Cubans to own their own house, relaxing wage restrictions, and having cell phones (W-S J, April 12 & 15, 2008). In essence, Cubans are beginning to have the right to own property; whether owning house/land, communication, or labor. Ala Coase, property rights are essence to the efficient functioning of decentralized markets.

In a related issue, this also raises a question of economic warfare. Trade embargoes are enacted to alter the policies of a foreign government, either through direct persuasion or indirect rebellion. As we are nearing the 50th anniversary of the Cuban trade embargo a legitimate question is when should it be considered a failure? Alternatively, given reforms such as these, how much must policy change in order for the U.S. to justify lifting the embargo?

EU Greenhouse Gas Permits

The Wall Street Journal reported (April 3, 2008) that EU carbon dioxide emissions increased 1.1% in 2007. This is especially interesting given that the EU had implemented a new policy to reduce such emissions. Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme was to cap emissions by having country's and industry's cap their total emissions. A secondary market was created for firms to buy and sell permits to pollute. The argument presented by the WSJ is that country's have offerred too many permits and have thus failed to provide enough incentives to make investments to reduce emissions. What is noteworthy is that a secondary market has been established. The property rights are well-defined and tradeable on open markets. This is a big victory. Given that the right to use, restrict, and dispose have been identified and agreed upon, the work of reducing carbon dioxide emission, continent-wide, can begin.

Hiring Ex-Cons

In the April 20, 2008 edition of the Winston-Salem Journal an editorial was written regarding the city's push to hire people coming out of prison or jail. Mayor Joines stated, "if we aren't able to get these individuals back into productive employment, there is a reasonable opportunity for them to revert back to criminal activity." Thus, as the argument goes, repeat offenses is a significant proportion of total crime and a determinant of criminal activity is poor labor market opportunities. Hence, if the city government steps in to specifically provide employment to ex-cons, then crime is reduced.

If I may play devil's advocate, another argument could be made. Providing additional labor market opportunities improves the quality-of-life after prison/jail. Therefore, for an individual considering whether or not to break a law the expected sanction is diminished. Thus, it is more likely that an individual will find the benefit from committing a crime to be greater than the expected cost, which results in more crime. Therefore, such a policy could, in fact, result in more crime.

This is the specific debate that Imai and Krishna (2004, International Economic Review) investigate. They show that improved labor market conditions do indeed reduce deterrence and hence lead to law-breaking. In fact, the effect is greater than the reduced recidivism to the repeat offenses and, hence, there is reason to believe that the city's plans might actually increase crime in the city.

Scientists Sued Over Black Hole

Two men are initiating a Federal lawsuit to stop the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) from building the Large Hadron Collider, which they have thus far invested 14 years and $8 billion on according to the NY Times (30 March 08). The men believe that there is a chance that the collider will create a mini black hole, which would consume the earth. Also, they believe there is a chance the collider will create a "strangelet", which will turn the earth into "strange matter" (I am not making up any of these words!).

These claims amount to a claim that CERN has failed to adequately make an environmental-impact assessment, which is required by the EPA.

How do scientist estimate the risks of groundbreaking experiments? Who gets to decide whether to proceed?

This is an example of the punishment of failed attempts and the punishment of the impossible. Suppose that it was impossible to create a black hole in this collider. If the scientist did not know that should they be punished for acting potentially (but impossibly) reckless? If they experiment does indeed create a black hole, then there would be no possible way for the rest of the world to obtain compensatory damages. Thus, the unilateral care model would predict an inefficient amount of precaution. What do you think?