Building Towards Certainty Rather Than Severity With Greg Newburn

For decades, the response to rising crime has been fairly predictable: increase penalties, increase sentences, and hope it works. My guest today says that framework misses the point. Greg Newburn is the director of criminal justice at the Niskanen Center, where his work focuses on reducing both crime and punishment at the same time through evidence-based policy . In this episode, we talk about why the criminal justice system may have been built around the wrong theory of deterrence, why certainty matters more than severity, and what it would look like to design a system focused less on increasing punishment and more on increasing the likelihood that crimes are actually solved.