Lessons from uncertainty : assembling crime prevention strategies from cost-effectiveness estimates

RAND pioneered ways to quantify the costs and eventual savings to the government from childhood interventions with crime prevention benefits.

Books such as Diverting Children from a Life of Crime and Investing in Our Children have shown that some programs ultimately save the government more than they cost.

But these estimates have sometimes relied on limited scientific evidence and many assumptions.

The authors update earlier estimates and test what happens when assumptions deviate from the expected.

They analyze trade-offs between risk and return, and show that it can make more sense to allocate funds across a diverse array of programs rather than concentrating resources in what currently appears to be the most cost-effective intervention.