The Seen and the Catastrophic Unseen in Our Criminal Justice System

Bastiat is perhaps most famous for his caution that we should not merely consider the observable consequences of public policy, but the hidden and unintended consequences as well-what he called "what is seen and what is unseen."

Few areas of public policy better illustrate what he was talking about than the criminal justice system. After a generation of "tough-on-crime" policies, here are some examples of how what we see often obscures what we can't see.