Photo: bik24ga | Wikimedia Commons
In Liberia and Ecuador, "more carrots and less stick" helped reduce crime and violence. A Chicago program called READIcombinedtherapy and job training, and was inspired by a Liberian program called Sustainable Transformation of Youth. Touring Monrovia with Johnson Borh in 2009, Chris Blattman kept running into men shining shoes or selling clothes who hugged Borh. Before his program, "I used to be like them,"they'd say, pointing to pickpockets or drug sellers. Blattman, a University of Chicago economist, then tested the approach with 999 of Monrovia's most dangerous men. Some got CBT, some got $200 cash, some got CBT plus cash, and a control group got neither. Over 10 years, crime was cut in half in the therapy plus cash group, with 338 fewer crimes per participant or about $1.50 per crime avoided (the program cost $530 per person). In Ecuador, sociologist David Brotherton found that homicides plummeted after gangs were legalized in 2007 and thus qualifying them for grants and social programming benefits.
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