Criminal Justice Reform - Coefficient Giving

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May 12, 2014

# Criminal Justice Reform

_**Editor’s note**: This article was published under our former name, Open Philanthropy. Some content may be outdated. You can see our latest writing [here](https://coefficientgiving.org/research-and-news)._

_Note: This writeup represents the state of our investigation into criminal justice reform as of May 2014, after some preliminary investigation. Since then, our views have changed noticeably, but they remain preliminary, and [we have hired a Program Officer](https://coefficientgiving.org/research/incoming-program-officer-for-criminal-justice-reform-chloe-cockburn/) to lead our work in this cause going forward. If you have additional information on this cause that you feel we should consider, please feel free to [get in touch](mailto:info@coefficientgiving.org)._

## In a nutshell

**What is the state of our investigation into U.S. criminal justice reform?**

We have completed our medium-depth investigation of criminal justice reform.[\[1\]](https://coefficientgiving.org/research/criminal-justice-reform/#f+3630+1+1) Throughout the rest of this page, “we” refers to both Good Ventures and GiveWell, as the two organizations are closely collaborating on this work. The investigation has continued to progress and we have made some grants in this area. However, we have not yet chosen criminal justice reform (or any other cause) as a long-term program area. In order to learn substantially more from this investigation we believe that we would need to commit to this cause for the medium-term (i.e., several years), so we have paused this investigation until we are ready to select U.S. public policy causes for that level of commitment.

**Why are we making criminal justice reform grants?**

Criminal justice reform seems like a particularly promising area because (a) we have identified a set of people who are promoting a particular viewpoint that is both appealing to us and appears underfunded, meaning that finding initial promising giving opportunities took less work in this area than we’d expect it would in many others; and (b) as evidenced by a wave of reform packages in over twenty states and the recent confluence of conservative and progressive interest in reform, this issue seems to strongly stand out from most political issues in terms of political momentum and tractability.

**What is the problem?**

The United States incarcerates a larger proportion of its residents than almost any other country in the world and still has the highest level of criminal homicide in the developed world.[\[2\]](https://coefficientgiving.org/research/criminal-justice-reform/#f+3630+1+2) According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, the United States incarcerated 707 persons per 100,000 residents as of December 2012, second only to Seychelles, which incarcerated 709 persons per 100,000 residents as of October, 2012. The third 

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