Crime and crime rates have been a big political issue lately in the U.S. Almost daily the New York Post would have articles about people released without bail who committed violent crimes -- it was easy no doubt to find such stories or anecdotes. The target of the Post and of many Republican politicians were the laws and rules allowing non-violent offenders to avoid jail by reducing or removing requirements to post bail in dollars or property. You may have noted that this is no longer such a big topic now that the midterm elections are finished. Contrary to popular impressions some observers have argued that some crime rates have actually been falling lately.

A related issue is the very high rate of incarceration in the U.S. compared to other countries. I have provided a few pages (4) for you to read about this. They are excerpts from online articles and only scratch the surface. This could be a major research pursuit but I don't want to go that far with this discussion. One thing you will note from the pages I provided is that the U.S. is "out of sync" or extremely dissimilar to other developed countries (OECD countries), and similar instead to such countries as El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Palau and Rwanda.

Here is what I would like you to do (and keep it brief - the point is to home in on some major points about costs and benefits briefly):

1. Read the Four pages on Incarceration rates in the Course Materials section. You can research it online further if you like -- it is interesting -- but that is not required.

2. I would like you to look up the term "human capital". I discussed physical resources or factors such as capital and natural resources in my early recordings in the course. What is the fundamental distinction between capital and economic land(i.e., natural resources)? In what way is human capital similar to how physical capital relates to natural resources as a component of overall human resources?

3. Many economists would say that the very high incarceration rates in the U.S. are extremely costly. What are the alleged benefits of this high incarceration rate? What are the economic costs of these high incarceration rates? I discussed the basic economic cost concept called "opportunity cost" in the early introductory recording; you should note that this is a very comprehensive concept that goes beyond simple accounting or financial costs. Identify as many of the economic costs as you can. Can you relate your answer to the topic of question 2 above to this question of economic costs?

*COPY PASTE THE LINK TO SEE THE FOUR PAGES*

file:///C:/Users/janvi/OneDrive/Desktop/Spring%202022%20york/HE%20111/Eco%20102%20DB%20Quest.pdf