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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

#181

Post by maze-le »

misja111 wrote: post #109
ClassyJacket wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It really doesn't seem very many steps above slavery Zero. It's literally slavery. The thought of it is barbaric and horrible.

Yes the thought of it is horrible, but isn't it part of the purpose of criminal punishments to scare away people from committing crimes?

>> but isn't it part of the purpose of criminal punishments to scare away people from committing crimes?

The premise: "Harsh punishments are scaring criminals from commiting crime" must be questioned. I highly doubt it is a valid premise. Just look at crime rates in regions where you have harsh criminal laws up to capital punishment. There is not even a correlation much less a causal relation between "Harsh on Crime" vs. "Low crime rate".

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

#182

Post by spydum »

sah2ed wrote: post #177
froindt wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What level of security is the prison? There are low security facilities in the United States where prisoners leave to work for the day and have to be back at a certain time.

Do you have any link(s) on this?

http://www.dc.state.fl.us/oth/inmates/wr.html

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

#183

Post by pixl97 »

77pt77 wrote: post #143
cubano wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being boorish about the subject... I was recently released from Las Vegas County Jail (CCDC) where all sentenced inmates, myself included, are forced , by state law, to "work" in some manner in the jail. In this case, work consisted of 11-hour shifts, 6 days a week, of ultra back-breaking kitchen work. We were not even allowed to have water cups anywhere outside the break room. They actually yelled fas…

> If you refused to work, you were put in the box and 5 days were added to your sentence. Don't you need a judge to determine that?

That depends on what 'added' means.

The sentence you receive from a judge is probably not anywhere close to what you will actually sit in jail for. Probation, parole, double time, triple time, good behavior, trustee status, all affect the outcome.

For example, you are sentenced to 3 years of jail for a non-violent drug offense. How long do you serve in jail? Very commonly 366 days, though it may be as much as a year and a half. That is if you don't get into any other trouble in jail. After that point you will be released on probation.

What the previous poster is likely stating is that if you willingly agree to be a slave for the state you get all the benefits of early release. The defectors that do not want to be slave labor are not given said benefits. An ironic application of the prisoners delma. If none of the prisoners would be willing to be a slave, the state could not hold them all, or 'extend' their sentences because of overcrowding.

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

#184

Post by outsidetheparty »

pjc50 wrote: post #54
diggan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's of the convicted, not of those in prison at any one time.

"Three out of five people in jail are unconvicted of any crime and are simply too poor to post even low bail to get out while their cases are being processed. Nearly 75 percent of both pretrial detainees and sentenced offenders are in jail for nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order offenses."

https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Pub...

There's a sort of pedantic distinction between "prison" and "jail" that can make these stats confusing, and occasionally deliberately misleading. If you're in "prison", then by definition you've been convicted. The percentage of nonviolent inmates is very high in both "jail" and "prison", though; the statement "non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated" is simply incorrect.

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

#185

Post by ythn »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #90
theBobBob wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The thought of it is barbaric and horrible.

Know what else is barbaric and horrible? The crimes some of the "slaves" commit

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

#186

Post by emodendroket »

soup10 wrote: post #146

giving criminals rights is a politically toxic because of religious doctrine: the point of jail is not to learn, but to suffer. the idea is if you flagrantly disrespect god(aka the power structure of the society you live in), you must suffer as an example to others. Its not an ideal system, but there's a certain sensibility to it that stabilizes society. If people saw those that go to jail, come out better persons. T…

What "religious doctrine" would that be?

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

#187

Post by rtkwe »

cpfohl wrote: post #159
walshemj wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devils advocate prison contracts have valid extra costs you have to vet contactors more than say an office cleaner. You also have to budget for extra security if your a contractor working in a prison you have to log all of your tools in and out to stop inmates nicking things that could be used as weapons or to aid an escape

I agree with who on the whole but I'm going to play....Angel's advocate? (What do you call the person playing devil's advocate to the Devil's advocate?) There is a (relatively famous) prison in Norway where the rehabilitation is so effective that the prisoner's are given these jobs and are handed chainsaws, picks, the keys to the boat off the island. The prisoners are the ones ferrying people to and from the prison.…

How common is that though? Taking one example is pretty fraught especially because the prisoners that are sent to that prison are naturally going to be of the lower risk, non-violent type unless that's how a majority of the prisons are run. There are prisons in the US with very open security too (though mainly for rich white collar criminals but then that's a group with a low likely-hood of attempting to escape). Heck there's a fair number of programs where prisoners are given big tools like that here in the US too.

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

#188

Post by logfromblammo »

77pt77 wrote: post #143
cubano wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being boorish about the subject... I was recently released from Las Vegas County Jail (CCDC) where all sentenced inmates, myself included, are forced , by state law, to "work" in some manner in the jail. In this case, work consisted of 11-hour shifts, 6 days a week, of ultra back-breaking kitchen work. We were not even allowed to have water cups anywhere outside the break room. They actually yelled fas…

> If you refused to work, you were put in the box and 5 days were added to your sentence. Don't you need a judge to determine that?

It might be that your actual sentence is 10 years, but the state may expect to send you to prison for the first 5 and have you live on probation or parole restrictions for the last 5. So the judge might tell you to serve 8 years in prison. That gives the state some years of leeway to both add time to your prison sentence for being difficult and to knock some off for being cooperative.

No matter which way you slice it, the sentence is still 10 years, and the state can decide how much of that is spent in prison, and how much outside as a less-than-entirely-free person.

If you can manage to serve your entire sentence in prison without actually committing additional crimes, you might be able to walk out the front gates and never have a single day of probation, but I put the likelihood of that ever happening at just above infinitesimal. People in prison would mostly rather be outside and on parole/probation.

You only need a judge's help to keep someone in prison past the actual length of their sentence.

IANAL and IHNBAP, so I may be up to 100% wrong about this.

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

#189

Post by crimsonalucard »

This seems to be a perverted trend in America. Medical bills, tuition and all fees in general bloated to the point where it doesn't make sense. Is this some sort of anthropological/economic phenomenon? Somebody should get to the bottom of this and write a book.

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

#190

Post by lowpro »

soup10 wrote: post #146

giving criminals rights is a politically toxic because of religious doctrine: the point of jail is not to learn, but to suffer. the idea is if you flagrantly disrespect god(aka the power structure of the society you live in), you must suffer as an example to others. Its not an ideal system, but there's a certain sensibility to it that stabilizes society. If people saw those that go to jail, come out better persons. T…

What a silly argument. (Disclaimer: atheist) Your argument doesn't understand what god(s) mean. In what world does anyone use society as an understanding or proxy of god? This argument makes a fallacious assumption as its primary argument then goes on to make other points based off of that incorrect assumption by definition.

And besides that, I think you grossly underestimate the stubbornness of many who go to jail in the first place. Getting a human to be humble is one of the toughest things you can do, and that difficulty is often an inverse of intelligence in my experience (are there studies on this? And I'm not talking about the ultra rich or ultra famous people.)

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