The Imperfectionists

Chapter 2Dragonfly Eye

A New Lens on Recidivism

For millennia, human beings have been wrestling with the twin challenges of crime and punishment. Ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia wrote the oldest surviving law code about 5,000 years ago—but when they took stylus to tablet, the justice they meted out was pretty rough.¹ Robbery was a capital offense, for instance, so the law enforcers of the day didn't have to worry much about dealing with repeat offenders, also called recidivists. Recidivism became a problem for the United Kingdom around the time of the Industrial Revolution when capital punishment was abolished for many minor crimes, and numbers continued to swell, especially after the practice of sending convicts to penal colonies came to an end (the last prison ship sailed for Australia in 1868).

Experts in criminology and social reformers have long sought to reduce recidivism rates, but they have had little sustained success. Even when they come up with innovative correctional approaches, there remains the challenge of testing them and paying for them. Then one morning in 2010, two young social finance professionals came to the London office of investor Sir Ronald (Ronnie) Cohen. Although Ronnie was a storied pioneer of the British venture capital industry, he had no formal training in criminology. Some years earlier the UK Treasury had invited him to chair a task force on social investment, and with the insights gained from that experience he co-founded Social Finance UK ...