A friend recently received the following chirpy email from the National Institute of Justice. We’re not making this up:
“NIJ CHALLENGE: COST-BENEFIT OF SEX OFFENDER REGISTRATION LAW
“Are you up for the challenge? Enter NIJ’s first-ever SORNA Challenge! NIJ is seeking innovative ways of developing strategies to measure the implementation costs and public safety benefits of the Sex Offender Notification and Registration Act (SORNA) – part of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 – by improving the effectiveness of sex offender registration and notification programs in the United States.
“Notification and registration programs have multiple public safety purposes, and empirical research on sex offenders has grown over the past decade. No study to date, however, has examined the multifaceted effects of SORNA, specifically the wide range of costs incurred in implementing the rules or the public safety benefits achieved. [Italics added].
“A cash prize of $50,000 is available. Deadline: Oct. 31.”
This is apparently a new streamlined process of how a bill becomes a law: first enact it, then figure out what it costs and what it does. What next? Cash prizes and free stuff for figuring out the cost/benefits of the Iraq war?
Here’s Appellate Squawk’s entry:
The public safety benefits of the government’s anti-“sex offender” crusade:
And let’s not forget its purpose.
Appellate Squawk 
Offering prize money is the best way to fund unbiased research.
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To be fair, you can try to predict the effects of legislation in advance (with varying degrees of success) but you can’t actually measure those effects until the legislation is in place. I do wonder, however, what it is about the accepted methodologies of sociology, criminology, and economics, that causes the NIJ to seek “innovative” approaches.
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Good point. Innovative=voodoo.
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You are the clear winner.
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Prize money is the best way to get stuff done.
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That’s one way to motivate people to do your research for you.
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