I speculate about why Open Philanthropy donated to criminal justice in the first place, and why it continued donating. I then estimate that criminal justice grants were distinctly worse than other grants in the global health and development portfolio, such as those to GiveDirectly or AMF. In this post, I first present the background for Open Philanthropy's grants on criminal justice reform, and the abstract case for considering it a priority. In particular, I am fairly sure that it was possible to realize sooner that the area was unpromising and act on that earlier on. My best guess is that, from a utilitarian perspective, this was likely suboptimal. Summaryįrom 2013 to 2021, Open Philanthropy donated $200M to criminal justice reform.
And for the estimation language used throughout this post, see Squiggle.-Nuño. Hello AstralCodexTen readers! You might also enjoy this series on estimating value, or my forecasting newsletter.
Epistemic status: Dwelling on the negatives.
