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

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

#351

Post by linkregister »

1024core wrote: post #245

I think the Prison Industry should be judged by their recidivism rate. The Prison Guards union in Cali is very, very strong (they were behind the '3 strikes' law, ensuring a lifetime of "clients"). Their pay and benefits should be tied to the recidivism rate. Prisons should not be training grounds for future criminals, but they are today. Also: prisons should be shuffled periodically, mixing up the population. That'l…

Shuffling prisoners around breaks up the family ties they have on the outside; visitors have a harder time if they have to travel further. This increases the likelihood prisoners will offend again.

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

#352

Post by anigbrowl »

Spellman wrote: post #286
wallflower wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13th is a Netflix documentary about this. Warning: It may be quite difficult to watch. https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741

Arguably also very liberal biased (speaking as a liberal-leaning individual). Much of this theory is based on The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander which first popularized the idea of how we utilized the prison system to intentionally discriminate and keep locked up (for free labor) the african-american populations. There recently was a book discussing a different exp…

Just because they're different doesn't mean they're incompatible. How do you think those perverse incentives came to exist in the first place? I'm amazed at the mental gymnastics some people will go through to avoid engaging with the fact that some other people are bigoted, selfish, and outright evil.

Nor does the existence of perverse incentives mean that those presented with them are helpless to do otherwise than go along with them. That is an abdication of moral responsibility. If you are presented with a perverse incentive that you feel is incompatible with your personal moral calculus, then it is your duty to reject it. To go along with it and then say you had no other choice is no different from the behavior of the 'good Germans' described by Hannah Arendt in The Banality of Evil. It's literally the exercise of privilege.

Liberalism only works so long as people are invested in the integrity of the institutions which underpin it. When those institutions are corrupted, liberalism becomes complicit in oppression. This is how democracies devolve into autocracies.

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

#353

Post by bawana »

is the need for prison simply the side effect of a population density that is too high? But that is a different topic. The issue is the cost of incarceration and how a once noble idea (eliminating bad behavior instead of eliminating the owner) has been 'corporatized'. It seems a fundamental rhythm of human activity is to express the goodness in us with a new idea. The evil in us then tries to maximize profit and efficiency resulting in a loss function that destroys initially unrecognized but important parameters of humanity.

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

#354

Post by sctb »

fivestar wrote: post #216

Until they murder someone you care about. I sincerely believe there is a reason that people behind bars are behind bars. I don't believe the feel-good narratives about noble prisoners who just had a bad turn in life, especially these days where people with long rap sheets are routinely set free to re-offend at will. I've seen them up close--there's not 1 in 20 that I feel sorry for. Every story is one of a downward s…

Being civil on Hacker News entails regarding other human beings as such.

We detached this flagged subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14496368.

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

#355

Post by anigbrowl »

danielam wrote: post #197
lovich wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, e…

nothing wrong with forced hard labor as a punishment for a crime to the degree required by justice

Ah, justice, that famously objective thing we can measure scientifically and which is not subject to any sort of sociopolitical bias.

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

#356

Post by enknamel »

GuiA wrote: post #350
enknamel wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I need to one up your boorishness. I don't think you are likely to break the law again right? That sounds like an effective correctional system. Sure it sucked. But jail/prison should suck.

Wow. Someone, whom you've never spoken to before, shares a personal story about their treatment in prison, and your reaction is "well you deserved it, treats you right". That's a fairly uncouth attitude to have towards one of your hacker peers.

Well no that's not my reaction. You shouldn't jump to conclusions that you want to exist. He had a bad time in jail. He is now unlikely to break the law again, right?

But maybe I'm wrong. Given his other comments it sounds like he's been in jail/prison more than once.

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

#357

Post by anigbrowl »

mcherm wrote: post #150
aswanson wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery is already legal in the US under the 13th amendment if one commits a crime. It's literally the highest law of the land.

> 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. The 13th amendment specifically permits "slavery" as a punishment for those convicted of a crime.

Yes, that's what the poster above you said.

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

#358

Post by aarongolliver »

dragonwriter wrote: post #339

Headline is an outright clickbait lie contradicted by the lead sentence; it doesn't cost more than the all-in annual cost of Harvard, but more than tuition. Not that the comparison is particularly meaningful in any case, since it's not like sending convicts to Harvard instead is an available alternative.

It says it costs "2,000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses to attend Harvard." so I have no idea what you're on about.

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

#359

Post by opo »

cubano wrote: post #331
throwaway040435 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get 3 years in jail, you get 3 years in prison. The only jail time you do waiting to be sentenced to prison is the time you wait to go to court. Do you think it's appropriate to call out someone for using "jail" instead of "prison", when the meaning is clear, and you made the same mistake just 5 minutes prior? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497654 and in your original post: https://news.ycombinator.…

No I most definitely did not make a mistake. Yes CCDC aka Clark County Detention Center (aka Las Vegas County Jail) is a jail in downtown Las Vegas where I did my kitchen slave labor recently on a 90-day sentence for basically jaywalking. If I were to be sentenced for more then a year, I would have been sent to a prison somewhere in the boonies of Nevada away from Vegas. The OP discussed a "3-year jail sentence", and…

>... on a 90-day sentence for basically jaywalking.

Can you elaborate?

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

#360

Post by crpatino »

Retric wrote: post #114
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…

There is nothing cheap about this labor, they are paying companies 70k to house someone so they can pay them 20c/h.

The cheapest kind of cheap is the one where you reap the benefits but make someone else pay the bill. And make that bill extra expensive, to add insult to injury.
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