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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

#81

Post by aquadrop »

blackguardx wrote: post #72
chii wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Even the juror compensation is something ridiculous like $10/day

Yes, it seems logical if jurors would be compensated at least as the minimal wage per hour. In small communities it could probably lead to something like 'professional juror' but I think it could be dealt with by monthly/yearly cap for compensation.

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

#82

Post by vidarh »

theBobBob wrote: post #69
csmark wrote: post #60

The USA has ~5% of the world's population but 22% of the world's prisoners. Financial profiting from prisoners: Prison Labor - paid $0.93-0.16/hr California Prisons didn't want to release prisoners because they would loose cheap labor..Courts said they had to: https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court-it-cant-rel... 30% of California forest firefighters are prisoners .. The state argued against parole credit f…

That really is simply disgusting. Keeping people imprisoned mainly so that they can be used as a source of cheap (borderline free) labour is pure exploitation. It really doesn't seem very many steps above slavery. I know that at least in theory people are in prison because they have done something wrong so that them working to in part pay for the cost of their incarceration seems justified but if they should be relea…

I don't think it is any steps above slavery. In Norway, partly for this reason, prisoners have the legal right to choose education instead of work.

If part of their punishment is meant to be financial restitution, then I believe that should be spelled out in the judgement, and they should be paid market wages for whatever work they do, and that should be garnished accordingly and kept out of the prison system entirely so there is no profit motive to keep people in, and so that the amounts are transparent.

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

#83

Post by pvg »

WalterBright wrote: post #80
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problems with incarceration rates in the US don't stem from imprisoning an excess of Martha Stewarts.

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

#84

Post by sokoloff »

jagermo wrote: post #28

Does the number include the housing and living costs for the students? edit: sorry, that was not a polemic post. But if the number for the students excludes stuff like food, rent or other living costs (e.g. medical checkups) that are "included" with prisoners, the gap might be smaller. I just checked the numbers for Germany, on the average, a prisoner costs 3281,40 Euro per month, so about 40k Euro or 45k USD per yea…

The Harvard/MIT numbers are around $66K all-in (including room and food).

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

#85

Post by icantdrive55 »

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.

What is it about living in the US that makes people join gangs, sell drugs, take drugs, and commit larceny?

To me, it's obvious. I don't even bother to debate it anymore. It has multiple heads. I don't think we have the best system, and our values have declined, or maybe they were never that great? Just make money? And so much of our self/sexual worth is predicated upon the the great American question, "What do you do?", or more importantly, "How much do you make?". I don't respond to people that are that shallow. Lately, I tell people I'm a retired porn star. Yea--there's a pause. It's great for the wealthy kids--at least now. I think most of you know exactly what I'm getting at.

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

#86

Post by coldtea »

mowenz wrote: post #29
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #14

Think about that for a second...$75K/yr for abhorrent, yet improving conditions and you'll come to the correct conclusion that contractors are absolutely fleecing not only the p̶r̶i̶s̶o̶n̶s̶ tax payers, but the prisoners themselves. Half a lifetime ago, I had to spend a weekend in jail while visiting a friend in California (accused of theft by a drunk lady who couldn't find her credit cards and fingered me instead of…

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…

>Remember when a small team built a better healthcare.gov? Why not open up well-regulated competitive markets for these kinds of problems?

Because the solution ("making prison a market") is what caused the problem in the first place.

And because some things, like treating people in prison humanely, you don't want to live to the lowest bidder (though even that would be an improvement over the worse than third world shithole that are us prisons).

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

#87

Post by usmeteora »

flexie wrote: post #11

I get it - it's tempting to solve the Harvard Business School issue by sending the MBA students to prison before they wreck havoc on the economy. But I'm not sure their dads would pay the exceeding tuition. Also, there is the whole question of whether it would be fair to the other prisoners. Pretty soon the prison economy would be infested with cigarette derivatives and yard swaps.

Back to the topic, prisons are just another haven for contract robbing. The prison contracts everything from security to mopping. Everything is 3x more expensive. Prison costs are a sink to our society.

Except taxpayers foot the bill. Theres an economic incentive to keeping crime low and right now were all being robbed blind, in this area as well (because yes there are too many to count)

The amount who are released within 5 years with little to no recovery or are going to end up in an even worse state, with even less of an ability to get a job, are more likely to continue to commit crime to make ends meet.

Before we talk about Harvard grads destroying the eocnomy, lets talk about making it less and less likely for 75% of the people imprisoned to ever be able to contribute to society once they are released.

We have a very protestant implementation of prison, they exist to punish people, not to reabilitate people or address the issues, and everyone ends up paying a higher cost with more damage in the end.

Yes people who are doing serious crimes should be put away, but we know that most of the time thats not the case, and furthemore, we know that alot of serious crimes including rape, have men released within 5 years, while a first time offender selling green could land 15 in prison.

Maybe.. http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/11/14/some-european-pri...

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

#88

Post by bluedino »

ido wrote: post #21
stoolpigeon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it helps show the cost of crime and look at different solutions but I don't see how it contains the solution. I had a car stolen by some guys once. They used my car to drive around breaking in to other cars and stealing things. The police caught them and took me to me car so that I could get it back. I also had to go through all the stuff in the back and tell the police what wasn't mine. It turns out they had…

Isn't an inordinately large percentage of US prison population due to fairly minor drug offences? I would think the argument is that fewer people need to be imprisoned for crimes that don't really negatively affect society as much as sending them to prison does.

No, it's like 10-15% at the state level. It's higher at the federal level but those guys are in there for distribution not getting caught with a joint.

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

#89

Post by lorenzhs »

jagermo wrote: post #28

Does the number include the housing and living costs for the students? edit: sorry, that was not a polemic post. But if the number for the students excludes stuff like food, rent or other living costs (e.g. medical checkups) that are "included" with prisoners, the gap might be smaller. I just checked the numbers for Germany, on the average, a prisoner costs 3281,40 Euro per month, so about 40k Euro or 45k USD per yea…

Now go on Google Images and search for pictures of a German prison, and compare that to the situation in California.

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

#90

Post by ClassyJacket »

theBobBob wrote: post #69
csmark wrote: post #60

The USA has ~5% of the world's population but 22% of the world's prisoners. Financial profiting from prisoners: Prison Labor - paid $0.93-0.16/hr California Prisons didn't want to release prisoners because they would loose cheap labor..Courts said they had to: https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court-it-cant-rel... 30% of California forest firefighters are prisoners .. The state argued against parole credit f…

That really is simply disgusting. Keeping people imprisoned mainly so that they can be used as a source of cheap (borderline free) labour is pure exploitation. It really doesn't seem very many steps above slavery. I know that at least in theory people are in prison because they have done something wrong so that them working to in part pay for the cost of their incarceration seems justified but if they should be relea…

>It really doesn't seem very many steps above slavery

Zero. It's literally slavery. The thought of it is barbaric and horrible.

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