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Longer Prison Sentences Do Not Deter Crime

Vox Jul 25, 2018
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
Click here for more.
Longer Incarceration Sentences Do Not Deter Crime
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Giving Compass’ Take:

• Vox reports on a program from the Open Philanthropy Project that examined the length of prison sentences in relation to crime rates and found this: “[B]uilding and filling prisons is not making people safer.”

• What can those dedicated to criminal justice reform due with the data compiled by the study described in this piece? How can we reach out to give formerly incarcerated people more economic opportunities and reduce recidivism?

• Here’s more about how philanthropy can support impactful criminal justice reform.


When the Open Philanthropy Project began a grant program for criminal justice reform, it asked itself a tricky question: Are we doing the right thing?

The project’s organizers believed that pushing for lower prison sentences, particularly for minor offenses, would not lead to more crime. This was supported by a general understanding of the past few decades of experience and research in the US. But the organization, ever skeptical of even its own biases, decided to run the numbers itself.

The analysis looked at the effects before, during, and after incarceration: essentially, deterrence, incapacitation, and aftereffects (whether and how someone changes behavior after incarceration). He focused on studies that leveraged experimental or quasi-experimental settings to look at the best possible evidence, covering 35 studies in all.

There are essentially two sides to the aftereffects: On the positive, prison can cause someone to be less likely to re-offend — by giving people a bad experience that they do not want to go through again, by connecting them with job training or addiction treatment, and so on. On the negative, prison can lead to more criminality — by connecting inmates to social networks of people in gangs or other criminal activity, or by making it much harder to get a legal job due to a criminal record.

Read the full article about how longer prison sentences do not reduce crime by German Lopez at Vox.com.

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Impact Philanthropy is a complex topic, and others found these selections from the Impact Giving archive from Giving Compass to be good resources.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
    Click here for more.
    Funders: Increase Your Payout During COVID-19

    Giving Compass' Take: • Vu Le urges funders to increase their funding during the COVID-19 pandemic rather than choose between organizations to support. • Are you doing enough to continue your support for organizations you work with? Can you increase your giving now?  • Read about the individual donor's edge when it comes to COVID-19 response.  In the past few weeks, I have seen so many arts, museum, and other organizations undergo endless challenges. Admissions tickets and events have disappeared, and with them a significant revenue stream. Many funders, however, have been focusing on missions that are classified “essential” (and they are) like safety and basic needs, which means that these arts and cultural organizations are struggling even further. I can imagine how frustrating this would be for our colleagues in arts and cultural organizations. Over the past decades, they have done what funders and consultants recommended as “best practices”: Diversify funds, generate earned-income, don’t be reliant on institutional funders, etc. And because of that, they are severely and negatively affected as COVID has closed everything down. To the funders out there and to the entire sector, we need to stop perpetuating these philanthropic Sophie’s Choices, this belief that we must make difficult sacrifices because of the lack of funding. No, there are hundreds of billions of dollars in endowments just sitting there because philanthropy has been continuously saving for a rainy day, with most foundations giving out only 5% of their assets each year. This means that 95% remains untapped, and today is that rainy day. There is plenty of funding for basic needs. And arts and culture! And advocacy! And community mobilization! And capacity building! And leadership! And research! And political engagement! What we lack is not the funds, but the boldness among foundation leaders to challenge their archaic philosophies and practices, combined with a thorough denial of the reality of this moment. Funders, if you don’t think that this pandemic warrants an increase in your payout beyond 5%, to 10% or 20% or more, then you live in a bubble of privilege wrapped in another bubble of delusions. Take action now, and stop clinging to some bizarre idea that you’re saving up for the future, when there may not even be a future at this rate! Read the full article about funding during COVID-19 by Vu Le at Nonprofit AF.


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