Vital City | Data In, Garbage Out

If, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing views in mind at the same time, then Megan Stevenson’s article calls for some first-rate thinking. We should react to it with two kinds of humility, each pulling against the other. We need to be humble about the power of social programs to alter behavior. But we should also be humble about the power of hard data to test social programs. Stevenson gathers randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that test criminal justice interventions, everything from hot-spot policing and body-worn cameras to drug courts and counseling. She finds few that had lasting impacts, and even those few failed to replicate in other places. If, as social scientists generally agree, RCTs are the best way to distinguish causality from correlation, then the best evidence seems to imply, to a first approximation, that nothing works — at least in the sphere of criminal justice. Not stopping there, Stevenson

If, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing views in mind at the same time, then Megan Stevenson’s article calls for some first-rate thinking. We should react to it with two kinds of humility, each pulling against the other. We need to be humble about the power of social programs to alter behavior. But we should also be humble about the power of hard data to test social programs. Stevenson gathers randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that test criminal justice interventions, everything from hot-spot policing and body-worn c

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