Robert Cringely has a very interesting
article about the interface between science and public policy at the PBS website.
He talks about a study comissioned by the U.S. Sentencing Commission on the early eighties about their new federal sentencing guidelines. The results from this study showed that the new guidelines would not lower the crime rate and would only increase the prison population.
There is no mention anywhere of this study, which was completely buried by the DoJ under then-secretary Edwin Meese. The proposed sentencing guidelines were accepted unaltered and the world we have today is the result. We spend tens of billions per year on prisons to house people who don't contribute in any way to our economy. We tear apart the black and latino communities. The cost to society is immense, and as Block and Nold showed, unnecessary. AND THE FEDS KNEW THIS AT THE TIME.
They buried the study and the results are what we see today.