Jeffrey L. Sedgwick – författare

Is cost-benefit analysis the best means to determine and formulate public policies? To answer this question Jeffrey Leigh Sedgwick examines its application to crime and criminal justice and the implications of that application. In this interdisciplinary study, Sedgwick first assesses the value of applying economic models to the social problem of crime. He compares economic models to sociological ones and then addresses the question of whether economic models are compatible with the values of a liberal political order. He shows that cost-benefit analysis suffers from technical and ethical problems when used to set law enforcement goals. Current techniques for measuring the costs of crime are crude and unreliable, he argues, and overreliance on citizen and consumer preference may lead to the adoption of policies incompatible with American political traditions and respect for human rights. Sedgwick concludes that economic analysis cannot, by itself, lead to the adoption of effective and publicly defensible policies to combat crime.

This is a discussion of the health of representative government in America today through an analysis of the contemporary character of state legislatures. During the last 20 years the states have undergone a major transformation as legislatures have come to resemble more and more the U.S. Congress. Now the sort of problems that plague Congress also plague the states. As professional politicians prosper, representative government suffers. Contents: Representation; Federalism; The Transformation of State Legislatures; The Changing of the Legislature in Four States: The Massachusetts General Court and the Commonwealth's Political Crisis, Jeffrey Leigh Sedgwick; The Pennsylvania General Assembly-The House of Ill Repute Revisited, Charles E. Greenawalt, II and G. Terry Madonna; California: The Not-So-Golden State Legislature, Sherry Jeffe; The New Scalawags: How the South Carolina Legislature Really Works, Richard Moore; Tables; Reforming State Legislatures. Co-published with the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives.