The Bootlegger and Baptist Argument for Public Regulation

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

A lot of regulations are the strange coalition of people who have high-minded altruistic motives and those who are very self-interested. You alluded to that at one point in your book so I'd like you to talk about that and see if there's some way to that might explain this distinction between crack and powder cocaine enforcement. Obviously I think suburban white kids in rich neighborhoods and high education parents they don't like their kids going to jail but what about this bootlegrin Baptist argument that some people with some direct economic interest have been pushing for this increased sentencing and incarceration do we have any evidence about that lobbying data or contributions to politicians?

Becky Pettit of the University of Washington and author of Invisible Men talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the growth of the prison population in the United States in recent decades. Pettit describes the magnitude of the increase particularly among demographic groups. She then discusses the implications of this increase for interpreting social statistics. Because the prison population isn't included in the main government surveys used by social scientists, data drawn from those surveys can be misleading as to what is actually happening among demographic groups, particularly the African-American population.