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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

#191

Post by narag »

emodendroket wrote: post #186
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?

A clue: there are a number of religions that include the concept of hell. Hell is the ultimate retribution, in case society wasn't able to apply it in this world. The underlying idea is that justice is a balance. If someone commits a crime, the reality is unbalanced and equilibrium must be restored punishing the culprit. This idea has been developed by some philosophers, Kant IIRC (but a lot of Kant's work is mostly a repackaging of Christianism).

Edit, just to add some history: justice system was very entangled with religion since forever. Romans were the ones that greatly developed the technical aspects. There was the directum --the righteous thing-- aspect vs the ius, the technical one, the contracts, the seek of solutions and social peace.

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

#192

Post by danielam »

wonderous wrote: post #68
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…

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Legally speaking seems like in the US that prisoners are slaves. SOURCE: https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.htm...

If hard labor is the punishment, and the punishment is commensurate with the crime, then no, it's not slavery. Slavery obtains under different conditions.

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

#193

Post by devmunchies »

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…

The punishment is supposed to be a deterrent for crime.

There are 2 camps: Ones that think of jail as a "correctional facility" (a place to fix broken people), and ones that think of it as punishment, justice for a crime.

No need to bring religion into everything. Punishment for "crimes" existed before christianity, friend.

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

#194

Post by matart »

smrtinsert wrote: post #154
usmeteora wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Do you mean economic incentive to send people to prison (not necessarily the same thing as keeping crime low)

Also political as a lot of politicians run on tough on crime

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

#195

Post by narrator »

usmeteora wrote: post #87
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 w…

I had a friend who lived in Bisbee, Arizona, which is a small town next to the border that has a big border patrol station in the city. He said that because of the border patrol presence there aren't any illegal aliens around to do construction. He could only get cheap labor from ex-convicts. It made me think that typically ex-cons have formed the lowest rung in the economic ladder that illegal aliens now fulfill.

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

#196

Post by zyx321 »

deweyair wrote: post #157
usmeteora wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

'The prison contracts everything from security to mopping.' In the vast majority of American prisons, the prisoners do the mopping. Security is still done by guards, but nearly every other job in the prison is done by the offenders. It's much cheaper this way - for state prisons average starting wage for non-industrial jobs is $0.25/hr. Industrial jobs don't start much higher, but they tend to have a higher cap aroun…

And often times they can even sell the surplus labor, which is basically free money for the company operating the prison. (that they can then spend to lobby for harsher sentences)

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

#197

Post by danielam »

lovich wrote: post #128
crusso wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the over-use of the word "slavery". Slavery was the capturing of innocent human beings and then forcing them and their progeny to do labor in perpetuity. It was utterly dehumanizing and undeserved treatment. We do a disservice to the meaning of slavery in the USA by calling everything slavery: taxation, prison work, marriage, etc.

So other than the progeny part, how is prison labor not exactly what you said? People are literally captured, and based on overturned convictions at least some percentage are innocent. These people are then forced to work and can have their sentence extended arbitrarily by bureaucrats and not the court system. Based on the California example the system even tries to keep people working when given a court order to rel…

You're confusing things. There is a difference between forced hard labor as just (and thus commensurate) punishment for a crime and actual, particular abuses committed by the justice system. There is nothing wrong with forced hard labor as a punishment for a crime to the degree required by justice (and frankly, many crimes deserve far worse). There IS something wrong with inflicting pain on someone who is innocent, esp. when those inflicting the pain do so without authority, without sufficient justification or in excess.

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

#198

Post by digsmahler »

cubano wrote: post #122
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…

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…

It's not boorish. I only learned about this practice of new American slavery from a friend who had come out of prison recently. Not enough people are talking about it, so nobody knows this is what's going on. Please, keep talking about it!

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

#199

Post by devmunchies »

ythn wrote: post #185
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.

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

Any child abusers or rapists arguably deserve it, but not to the benefit of a private company. And they shouldn't be required to work imo.

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

#200

Post by MisterBastahrd »

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?

Given recidivism rates, no. A week or a month might wake someone up. A few years is just going to get them comfortable, so figure out other ways to attempt to cure them of their desire to transgress.
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