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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of mass incarceration analysis: John Pfaff tears apart NRC report

By Douglas Berman

DownloadAstute readers who also follow closely a lot of broader media and political discussions of mass incarceration might have noticed that I have given relatively little attention on this blog to the massive report released late last month by the National Research Council (NRC) titled “The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences.”   To date, I only noted the report and some early reactions to it in this post.

One reason for my limited blog coverage is a result of the NRC report running more than 450 pages (accessible at this link

Fortunately, a leading legal academic and empiricist with a critical eye has started to bring a (very) critical perspective to the NRC report. Through a series of astute posts at PrawfBlawg (all so far linked below), Professor John Pfaff has started to pick apart a number of notable flaws and omissions in the NRC analysis.  John’s first post, titled “The Problematic National Research Council’s Report on Incarceration: Some Initial Thoughts,” previews his series this way:

The National Research Council, the well-respected research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, recently released a putatively authoritative report on the causes and implications of US incarceration growth.  Sadly, it appears to be a deeply, profoundly flawed report.  It is, in short, a rehashing of the Standard Story that I have argued time and again lacks real empirical support.

Dangerously, this report gives the Standard Story the NRC’s seal of approval, which will only increase its hold on policy-makers’ perceptions.  The New York Times has already written an editorial pushing the NRC’s Standard-Story arguments, and no doubt it will be cited widely in the months to come.

So in the posts ahead, I want to dig into the report more deeply.  I will certainly acknowledge what it gets right, but my sense so far is that it is one rife with errors.

From the start, here are John’s posts to date highlighting some of the NRC errors he sees: