Prisoner's dilemma: incarceration and crime.

• Author: Balko, Radley
• Position: Violent crime control - Brief article

AFTER A nearly two-decade decline, violent crime in the U.S. has begun to inch upward again. The shift has been powered almost entirely by small-to-mid-sized cities such as Cincinnati, Charlotte, and Baltimore. Crime in larger cities such as New York and Chicago has either remained static or continued to fall.

So what's the solution? It probably isn't the "more laws, more prisons" approach that lawmakers typically adopt when crime goes up. The Washington Post recently reported that contrary to conventional wisdom, the Big Apple's violent crime rate dropped dramatically during the last 15 years even as the city emptied its jail cells. The number of prisoners in New York City has dropped by 33 percent since 1993, in stark contrast to the rest of the country, where admissions have jumped by 72 percent.

"I can't tell you exactly why violent crime in New York declined by twice the...