The killing of George Floyd has prompted a great deal of debate over whether the US should shrink its police departments. The research literature suggests that the presence of police officers does reduce crime, though they’re not cheap, and as is increasingly recognised, impose substantial harms on the populations they are meant to be protecting, especially communities of colour.

So maybe we ought to shift our focus to unconventional but effective approaches to crime prevention — approaches that would shrink the need for police or prisons and the human toll they bring with them.

Jennifer Doleac — Associate Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University, and Director of the Justice Tech Lab — is an expert on empirical research into policing, law and incarceration, and we chose her to introduce the problem of criminal justice reform.

This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on July 31, 2020. Some related episodes include:

• #82 – James Forman Jr on reducing the cruelty of the US criminal legal system
• #41 – David Roodman on incarceration, geomagnetic storms, & becoming a world-class researcher

Series produced by Keiran Harris.