It's very clear that it is a very cost-inefficient way of dealing with crime. When you have 2.3 million or 2.4 million people incarcerated, as you do in the United States, you do, of course, have some impact on property crime. The issue is really one of how could you use this money. A very interesting study was done in California, and it showed--I'll use the table that is in the book at the end of chapter 2--if you want to reduce crime by 10% you would have to increase taxes by about $220 per household per year. You could achieve the same through a parent training program for about $50, and you could do it by helping youth complete school for about $35. That is just one of many studies.
You can look at the Washington State Institute for Public Policy--it's like the Library of Parliament here--and they would show you the cost-effectiveness, where the return is both reduction in harm to victims and reduction in cost to the system. They show how you can avoid prison construction by investing in prevention.
On proposition 36, which is talked about in my book and which is similar to the community treatment programs we talked about, there is a 61% majority. People in California do not want to pay for prisons when they're told what actually works. They actually ordered investments of $120 million a year in prevention, and they required evaluation, which is very important. When Governor Schwarzenegger took over, because the evaluation had showed that it worked, they continued.
I could go on for some time. The evidence is incredibly clear. Perry Preschool is one to seventeen.