Going bigger and faster

In July 2023, I left my tenured position as an economics professor to join Arnold Ventures (AV) — a philanthropy focused on evidence-based policy. I was tapped to lead their Criminal Justice program, with two broad goals: (1) raise the bar for what counts as research evidence (i.e., bringing an economist’s obsession with distinguishing correlation from causation), and (2) reorient AV’s policy priorities around the highest-impact ideas.

Since then, I’ve built a fantastic team and an ambitious strategy — facilitating more and better research to figure out what works, then investing in policy development and advocacy to bring effective interventions to scale across the US. And I’ve been thrilled to see how well that strategy has worked.

My team is changing the policy conversation about public safety in at least two big ways:

First, we’re highlighting the importance of innovation and failing fast as the way to find solutions to tough problems. Good intentions aren’t enough. Most good ideas won’t work, but some will. We need to try lots of new things, but stay humble as we search for those high-impact needles in the good-idea haystack.

Second, based on lots of existing evidence about how to reduce crime, we’re shifting attention from severity of punishment (longer sentences) to certainty of punishment (solving more crimes, faster). The latter has a much higher ROI, as I wrote about here.

Economists love helping people allocate scarce resources more effectively, and it’s been a joy to do this in the public safety arena. (For more detail — on what we know and how the economics toolkit helps us learn more — check out my book, The Science of Second Chances: A Revolution in Criminal Justice.)

Over the past three years, I’ve learned a ton about the criminal justice policy and advocacy spaces, how they interact (or don’t) with the research world, and what the primary constraints are in the research-to-impact pipeline. I now know most of the key players in this space, including a wide variety of organizations doing incredible work. And I’ve learned a lot from Laura and John Arnold about how to deploy capital most effectively. With their guidance, I’ve sharpened my thinking on the role of philanthropy (which I honestly had never thought much about before 2023).

Here we are, in June 2026, and I’ve decided it’s time for another leap.

I told my team earlier this week that I’m leaving AV this summer. I’m so proud of what I’ve built here, but I’m eager to seize the momentum we now have in this space. I want to continue all the work I’ve done — in academia and at AV — to build this field further and have even more of an impact on the ground.

The Arnolds put incredible resources into this space (evidence-based public safety), but they can’t do it all themselves. I want to persuade other high-net-worth individuals to invest in an innovative, ROI-focused public safety strategy — one that focuses on impact over ideology. Such a strategy would pilot outside-the-box ideas like GLP-1s to treat addiction, better diagnostic tests to measure young kids’ lead exposure (such exposure increases violent behavior later in life), and employer insurance to incentivize hiring people with criminal records, alongside fresh ideas to improve traditional institutions like police and prisons. I’m intrigued by the idea of General Managers for important issue areas, and think I’m the right person to do this in the public safety space.

I’m still figuring out the details and will be having lots of conversations in the coming months. But I know it’s time to spin this work out. I want to go bigger and faster, to make more communities safer. I am, of course, feeling extra grateful for my network of friends and colleagues right now — especially those who push me to take more risks, more often. We should all do more of that!

I’ll be using this newsletter to share what I’m thinking about and what I’m learning as I go. I hope you’ll stay tuned.

Onward!

I spoke with fellow skeptic Michael Shermer about my book, on the Michael Shermer Show. You can listen here:

Want more? You can find The Science of Second Chances wherever you buy books.