Criminal justice expenditures have more than doubled since the 1980s, dramatically increasing costs to the public. With state and local revenue shortfalls resulting from the recent recession, the question of whether crime control can be accomplished either with fewer resources or by investing...

We calculate the social return on algorithmic interventions (specifically their Marginal Value of Public Funds) across multiple domains of interest to economists--regulation, criminal justice, medicine, and education. Though these algorithms are different, the results are similar and striking....