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Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

latimes.com

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Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#71

Post by gambiting »

ptaipale wrote: post #59
gambiting wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In UK you can claim cost of travel, meals, loss of earnings and childcare: https://www.gov.uk/going-to-court-victim-witness/expenses-fo... Where I'm originally from(Poland) it was the same - I was summoned to court, after the trial I went to the clerk, said where I drove from and was paid cash for fuel. Had I taken the train it would have been refunded fully.

Is this the same regardless of your role in the trial? Over here (Finland), if you are witness, you are compensated (meagerly, not always reasonable). If you are the accused, you pay for your own travel - so the professional criminal class just skips the trial, thereby causing lot of unnecessary hassle to witnesses and injured parties. Then a new trial date is set, and on the nth try the police might pick up the accu…

According to [0](sorry, in Polish) both sides can get the money back for costs of getting to/back from court, not just the accusing/witness. Not sure about UK.

[0] http://e-prawnik.pl/artykuly/postepowanie-przed-sadem/zwrot-...

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#72

Post by blackguardx »

chii wrote: post #48
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the US court system not refund travel cost? I'm sorry, I'm actually laughing out loud for that one. No, they do not refund any cost you incur for going to court. Luckily, I wasn't accused of any drug crimes or they may have seized my car and kept it under then-existing asset forfeiture (legal theft) laws

if you were wrongly convicted of a crime, would the costs of your defense be somehow be re-imbursed or compensated?

No. In the US, costs are never reimbursed in criminal trials. They might be reimbursed in civil suits, if rarely.

Even the juror compensation is something ridiculous like $10/day. I don't think subpoenaed witnesses are compensated for anything.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#73

Post by agumonkey »

privateprofile wrote: post #67
agumonkey wrote: post #51

Gonna throw some weird idea about prison, what about: - Smaller but individual cells. (have to think about how to keep them very clean) - No outside yard for crowd. - No plural bathroom. Everything you do is for the benefit of society 90% and the rest for you. - Clean something outside, plant trees I don't know, so you get walk, sun and forest time. - You can read books, or some journals. - You can talk to old wise p…

What about taking a step back to really think about why the US has such an absurd (and the largest) number of people on lockup? [1][2] Someone certainly stands to gain from it and it certainly isn't society at large, as you can easily grasp from the results on the "war on drugs"... [3] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_in.…

Right, absurd laws should be removed too.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#74

Post by gabemart »

This is a cheap, sensational headline and an article that lacks depth and analysis.

At the end of 2006, there were ~160,000 people in prison "institutions" in the state of California[1]. The design capacity of those institutions was ~79,000 people[1], so the occupation was ~204% of the design capacity.

At the end of 2016, there were ~114k people in prison institutions[2], which was ~134% of the design capacity.

Obviously, if prisons are vastly overcrowded, and over time the number of people in prison is reduced substantially, the per-prisoner cost will sharply increase. There are no financial savings on infrastructure because institutional capacity is still vastly exceeded, and the savings in other areas will not be proportional to the overall drop in prison population because the people released early tend to be less expensive to imprison, as they tend to be incarcerated for less serious crimes.

Whatever one's political allegiance, the fact that the prison system in the state of California has been running at a minimum over 130% of design capacity for the last decade is a tremendously serious issue, and it feels trivialising to make a nonsensical comparison to the cost of university tuition, and to present the fact that per-prisoner costs have risen while prisoner numbers have fallen as anything less than blindingly obvious.

A discussion of the prison crisis in California seems completely worthy of Hacker News, but it shouldn't be based on an article like this.

  [1] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad0612.pdf

  [2] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad1612.pdf

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#75

Post by mowenz »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #43
mowenz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when a small team built a better healthcare.gov? Why not open up well-regulated competitive markets for these kinds of problems? Let some bright people solve them by going at them with their ingenuity. The fastest way towards progress is fair and honest competition. Government can regulate the market by setting the goals: low violence inside, low costs, low re-offences of released, high security, high educat…

> I think the best answer to these problems we face is competition. I'm sorry, but that is the worst answer. Perverse incentives and moral hazard problems not withstanding, incarceration as a market, profit from human misery and suffering is absolutely morally repugnant. > Remember when a small team built a better healthcare.gov? You're comparing apples to naked mole rats. Running a website (that does exactly what yo…

Where we agree is that it is a dangerous place to open up to the market. If it's not well-regulated it could face these kinds of problems you mentioned, and others as well.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#76

Post by agumonkey »

ekianjo wrote: post #55
agumonkey wrote: post #51

Gonna throw some weird idea about prison, what about: - Smaller but individual cells. (have to think about how to keep them very clean) - No outside yard for crowd. - No plural bathroom. Everything you do is for the benefit of society 90% and the rest for you. - Clean something outside, plant trees I don't know, so you get walk, sun and forest time. - You can read books, or some journals. - You can talk to old wise p…

i like the idea but there is not much you can do to coerce folks into doing the activities you suggest. Not everyone in prison is of a good nature.

Nobody is forced to do anything actually. Only outside things will be done chained, loose enough to do the thing but otherwise no orders or anything.

My idea is that people with nothing to do, and no absurd violent crowds will start to soften and try stuff out of boredom or old desires (say before they turned into the "dark side").

You either stay silently in your cell or you do something that won't cost society and will give them something back, and you will also get something on the way (new knowledge, less boredom, health, etc).

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#77

Post by erbdex »

If you haven't, Netflix's has a documentary called 13TH[1] where a loop hole in the slavery abolishment act was used to mass incarcerate blacks in the USA. As indicated in other threads, USA is inhabited with just 5% of the world's population but runs 25% of all prisons.

[1] https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80091741

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#78

Post by pvg »

diggan wrote: post #41
pvg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a very effective option because non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated. You could send them all home and still be more or less where you started.

Now I'm not american, but "non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated" didn't sound right to me. According to "Table 1.1. Estimated number of felony convictions in state courts, 2006" [0] it seems that only 18% of convictions are because of violent crimes, leading to 82% being non-violent, that doesn't feel like "a small fraction" to me. It's not the latest number, but feels you're trying to giv…

but feels you're trying to give a different view than reality.

It might feel differently if you were looking at incarceration statistics.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#79

Post by LeifCarrotson »

chii wrote: post #48
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the US court system not refund travel cost? I'm sorry, I'm actually laughing out loud for that one. No, they do not refund any cost you incur for going to court. Luckily, I wasn't accused of any drug crimes or they may have seized my car and kept it under then-existing asset forfeiture (legal theft) laws

if you were wrongly convicted of a crime, would the costs of your defense be somehow be re-imbursed or compensated?

Um, no? That verdict is what you are paying your lawyer to get for you. And if you are one of the few who aren't to accept a plea bargain and actually force the issue to go to trial (which is necessary to prove that you were wrongly convicted), it's going to cost many thousands of dollars.

A median for the defense is about $1500, including all the cheap plea bargains that don't go to a time-consuming expensive trial. A starting price for a misdemeanor that goes to trial might be $2000-$3000. Felonies and long, complicated trials just go up from there.

You may be thinking of a civil defense, where you can work out to pay nothing if you lose, but they're going to take some of the pot if you win. Or of a public defender, who is nominally free, but most states charge a few hundred to a couple thousand in court fees anyway.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#80

Post by WalterBright »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #50
pvg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a very effective option because non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated. You could send them all home and still be more or less where you started.

I think we focus on non-violent offenders too much. There are many "violent" offenders in prison who aren't social deviants, but are a product of their environment. It is a bit sad, but violence is often employed to solve problems especially in low-income neighborhoods. I think just as much attention needs to be paid to younger first or second offenders who haven't been swallowed up by criminality or prisons, includi…

Offenders like Martha Stewart and Bernie Madoff are not likely to be violent in prison, so there is no need to go to the huge expense of treating them as if they are violent. Furthermore, brutalizing such people seems hardly necessary or productive.
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