Return on investment

Crime prevention has a stronger return on investment than jail or police spending.

  • 9 Minute Read

The fiscal crisis affecting the District of Columbia is also an opportunity: Policymakers can make better choices about how to spend tax dollars to increase safety for all members of the DC community. DC spends one billion dollars on jails and policing. If DC reinvested 13 percent of its annual jail and policing budget into six different crime prevention programs, the District could have safer communities. The reinvestment would pay for itself by reducing victimization, lowering criminal justice system costs, and helping build the economy.  These six programs or areas of work would focus on addressing crime survivors’ trauma, strengthening mental health crisis response, connecting returning citizens to employment and housing, ensuring young people at-risk of system involvement have access to tutors that can change their trajectory, and repairing broken or inadequate street lamps. As the justice system agencies’ budgets are being scrutinized, DC should apply cost-benefit analysis to all investments made in the name of safety and reinvest public safety resources towards approaches that have a long-term return on investment.

What you need to know
Americans feel as unsafe in 2025 as they did in 1990 – despite spending $300 billion annually on the justice system.

Opening Trauma Recovery Centers for crime survivors would increase safety.

It is clear that when researchers have looked into the topic, victimization is positively correlated with crime, and people who receive help recovering from trauma are much more likely to escape the cycle of violence. In 13 states, Trauma Recovery Centers provide survivors of violence with the help they need to heal by increasing access to trauma-informed, quality care, regardless of how they became a victim or whether they can pay for the service. DC needs, at minimum, seven Trauma Recovery Centers, which will cost $7 million to operate. Violent crime victimization costs the country $300 billion annually, and according to Everytown for Gun Violence, gun violence alone costs DC residents $2 billion a year. 

Expanding mental health crisis response services would reduce reliance on police.

Too often, when police encounter someone in crisis, it ends with an arrest, incarceration, or a violent interaction. A better outcome would be connecting the person to the care they need. In 100 communities,  crisis response approaches deploy unarmed, specialized civilian teams to manage mental health and other crises. The aim is to connect someone to resources, de-escalate a crisis, and provide a public health approach to the crisis rather than a law enforcement intervention. A crisis response model used in St. Petersburg, Florida, diverted 37 percent of noncrime calls to teams in a nonprofit that are trained in crisis intervention. These teams respond to emergency calls without police, de-escalating situations, and linking people to relevant social services. St. Petersburg City Council appropriated $1.6 million to this program in the 2025-2026 budget year. Since DC is three times the size of St. Petersburg, it is estimated that DC should appropriate $6 million a year for this program.  At one point, DC established a pilot program like the St. Petersburg program, but it closed in 2023.  The mental health crisis is estimated to cost the country $477.5 billion a year.

Growing reentry employment programs would increase the Gross Domestic Product.

Research indicates that stable employment after prison significantly reduces recidivism, but nearly a third of people leaving prison are unemployed. One study of state minimum wages showed that re-arrest rates fell by 2.15 percent for every $0.50 increase in the minimum wage. DC needs employment programs that provide returning citizens with a $20-an-hour job, along the lines of what has already been implemented in 12 states, including Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia. Based on national surveys of people with criminal records who say they “experienced difficulties getting a job, maintaining employment, or making a living, ” DC needs dedicated employment for at least 55 percent of the approximately 1,000 people annually returning from prison. For $21.1 million a year, DC could pay the salaries for these 550 people. At $20 an hour, this means that returning citizens would earn an annual salary of $38,400 during their first year home. This could help address the long-term earning prospects for returning citizens, as people who were incarcerated earn an average of $500,000 per person less across their lifetimes. Researchers estimate that the challenges returning citizens and people with criminal records face around employment cost the US Gross Domestic Product as much as $87 billion annually.

Providing more affordable housing for returning citizens would reduce recidivism.

Housing is a critical factor in determining whether or not someone returning to the community will recidivate. People recently released from prison are 11.5 times more likely to experience homelessness than the general public. Of the approximately 1,000 people who return from prison each year, national surveys suggest that at least 43 percent will “experience difficulties getting housing.” If DC were to simply pay the market rent of a one-bedroom apartment (which as of February 2025 is $2,420, or $29,040/year) for this population of 430 returning citizens, it would cost $12.4 million a year. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the shortage of affordable housing costs the American economy about $2 trillion a year in lower wages and productivity.

For about the cost of buying a vending machine, a community violence intervention program can prevent one act of violence.

Tutors for economically disadvantaged students could keep young people out of the justice system.

A significant portion of individuals within the juvenile justice system struggle with low literacy levels, and a staggering 85 percent of children held within detention centers fall into this category. The National Bureau of Economic Research highlights the relationship between low literacy and crime, explaining how incarceration drastically diminishes the likelihood of graduation.  Fifty-one percent of DC students, about 50,000 students, were identified as economically disadvantaged and at-risk of poor academic outcomes. According to an estimator tool developed by the National Student Support Accelerator, 50,000 students in DC could receive three small-group tutoring sessions a week, alongside four other students, from a tutor paid $20 an hour. The total cost for tutoring would amount to $52 million a year. If these tutors increased students’ outcomes and helped just 230 students avoid incarceration at the New Beginnings facility, then in a few years, the investment would easily pay for itself. The Office of the School Superintendent of Education’s efforts to expand high-impact tutoring programs have been limited to date due to funding constraints.

Replacing street lights can reduce crime and increase safety.

In a meta-analysis of more than 20 studies looking at this topic, improving street lighting was associated with a 14 percent reduction in total crime. For studies that measured both daytime and nighttime crime, the reduction was even greater at 18 percent. Cities like New York City and Philadelphia have documented reductions in the number of homicides and violent crimes following improvements to street lighting. In DC, there are documented parts of the city with street lights that do not work properly, do not exist, or do not provide ambient coverage in a community. A few years ago, there were an estimated 75,000 street lamps in DC. DC could replace or fix ten percent of these lamps at a cost of $4,000 each, or approximately $30 million.

DC could use a cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the impact of public safety spending.

The Council of the District of Columbia will currently analyze the basic costs of law, policy, or practice. If the cost of implementing a law is not included in the budget, it will not take effect.   These analyses do not project what upstream costs a change might have. For example, legislation that increases MPD’s ability to arrest someone or that makes it more likely for someone to be detained pretrial does not estimate the cost of that impact on jail spending. Some policymakers, including those in the justice system, have used a cost-benefit analysis to present and show policymakers that there are additional benefits for every dollar or increment of spending on a prevention program, and contrast those benefits against the true justice system cost.  For example,  the RAND Corporation showed that,  for every $1 investment in prison education programs, there is a $4 to $5 reduction in incarceration costs, because that graduate is less likely to generate a public cost by committing new crimes and being incarcerated.  At least thirty-six states reported that at least one of their cost-benefit analyses influenced policy decisions or debate.

WHERE TO LEARN MORE

Our Solutions

DC should:

  • As part of the budget process, policing, prosecution, and corrections spending must undergo cost-benefit and return on investment analysis.
  • Reinvest the justice system budget into those approaches where there is a clear, quantifiable return on investment.

special thanks

The Future’s Institute

Last Updated on December 30, 2024

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