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In Brown v. Plata, Justice Alito sounded the alarm, and cautioned that releasing 30,000 prisoners could result in an increase in crime.

The prisoner release ordered in this case is unprecedented, improvident, and contrary to the PLRA. In largely sustaining the decision below, the majority is gambling with the safety of the people of California. Before putting public safety at risk, every reasonable precaution should be taken. The decision below should be reversed, and the case should be remanded for this to be done. I fear that today’s decision, like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years, we will see.

Well Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics, may just take up Justice Alito’s challenge.

Last week, the Supreme Court ordered California to release at least 30,000 prisoners due to poor prison conditions caused by overcrowding.

This is what economists call a “natural experiment,” or what I prefer to call an “accidental experiment.” The Supreme Court order will be a “shock” to the California prison system, leading to roughly a 10 percent reduction in the prison population there. I used this sort of accidental experiment in a paper I published back in 1996, finding a large impact of mandated prison releases on state crime rates.  If my estimates remain relevant to the current time period, I predict that California violent crime rates should rise about 4 percent relative to the rest of the U.S. over the next few years. That adds up to about 80 extra homicides a year.

Five years from now, no doubt, an economics graduate student will analyze the data and tell us what the actual numbers look like. Unless, of course, I beat them to the punch!

Let’s see what economists find in a few years.

I have previously blogged about efforts in Illinois and New York to publish lists of gun owners, and noted that such a list would provide a criminal with an easy-to-access list of unarmed families. Easy picking.

The Economix blog has some more on this point:

Economists know that information affects criminal activity – that crime is reduced when criminals see a greater likelihood that they will be caught or that they would face a stiffer penalty when convicted. As in other areas of activity, studies show that criminal behavior is, on average, sensitive to the costs and benefits of committing a crime.

Potential victims recognize this sensitivity and take steps to protect themselves. Sometimes they install locks and alarms, knowing that criminals may get through them but would rather spend their effort on another victim who is less well protected.

Just as most criminals would rather avoid locks and alarms, many of them would rather commit their crime without being shot by a victim brandishing a firearm. Without access to a gun-owner database, criminals in Illinois may expect that any victim might use a firearm for defense.

Making the list public would also permit criminals to select victims who do not appear on the gun-owner list, to lower the odds that their victim has a firearm for self-defense.

Some criminals intend to steal guns. A public gun-owner list would help them, too. Either way, the public gun-owner list gives criminals choices — to choose a gun owner or a nonowner, whichever better serves their purpose.

…

When it comes to Illinois’s gun-owner database, both gun owners and nonowners can benefit from privacy.

The purposes of these lists is not to prevent crime–they won’t. Those who ignore the registry are the same people who have illegal guns. By definition, those with unregistered firearms (the only legal types in New York and Illinois) would never register. The only people to have their names on the list are law-abiding citizens; the very people society has the least to worry about (See the Constitutionality of Social Cost).

The purpose of these acts is to stigmatize gun ownership, and place firearm owners on a stage as those society needs to keep an eye on (similar logic as sex offender lists).