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At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

latimes.com

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Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#51

Post by izietto »

ujhmi6 wrote: post #38
izietto wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very bigot reasoning. The most civilized countries in the world (Scandinavia) tend towards the opposite: - shorter incarceration period: incarceration is useful just for frustrated masses, not for the society - rehabilitation: if incarceration period is useful to something, that is giving people time and space to restart their lives

Scandinavia is a bad example; that only works when you have a culturally and racially homogeneous society.

Still wrong; Scandinavian countries have high immigration rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Sweden#Current_...

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#52

Post by fxj »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #37
dabbledash wrote: post #16

Not commenting on the specific numbers, but maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that a year of college costs less than food, housing, healthcare, security, and programs combined?

As a non-American, what I find mostly surprising are these two things: 1) that a society that mostly believes that a system of private businesses competing in a free market is the be all and end all of optimal resource allocation end up having the most expensive health care, higher education and apparently, prison system in the world; that this fact does not trigger more thought and discussion; 2) that despite incarc…

I think the problem is that all three sectors that you cite, health care, higher education and prison system, there is no free market but they are oligopols where only a small number of big players can lever their weight and keep others out.

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#53

Post by samdoidge »

nikhizzle wrote: post #8

To put this in perspective, the US has the highest incarceration rate of any country. I have trouble finding good numbers on recidivism, but anecdotally (based on sparse evidence) it seems like the US approach to incarceration is not working. Another fact supporting this is that the racial distribution in US prisons is uncorrelated with that of the general population. Specifically, 37% of inmates are African American…

The First Step Act [1] is a start towards reducing recidivism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Step_Act

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#54

Post by jMyles »

maxehmookau wrote: post #44
jMyles wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thank goodness for unions! The Correctional Peace Officers Association literally advocates for terrible public policy because it is in the financial interest of their members. There is no goodness to celebrate here. This is an evil organization and in a just world it will come to a swift, peaceful, and complete end.

That's literally the job of a union. To further the financial interest of its members.

Even if I agree that a public sector union has zero obligation to the public good - and I don't - I still don't think you can "thank goodness" for an organization that advocates for its financial interest of its members if that interest is bad for everyone else.

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#55

Post by Pyxl101 »

isolli wrote: post #19
namdnay wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of your points, but I'm not sure about the validity of the following: > the racial distribution in US prisons is uncorrelated with that of the general population. Specifically, 37% of inmates are African American, suggesting they may be incarcerated for lesser cause than those of other backgrounds This statistic could suggest lots of things, I'm not sure why being incarcerated for lesser cause would…

The charts in here [0] should alleviate any doubts you had: when it comes to marijuana possession, blacks are indeed arrested at massively higher rates. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the-b...

Please also consider the rates at which different population groups commit serious crimes, such as murder and rape. We are talking about prison populations after all - people convicted of minor drug offenses like possession are a small percent of the prison population.

The publication "Homicide Trends in the United States" by the US Department of Justice has crime data broken down by race, for example. See pages 11 and 12: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

The data shows that people of different races commit serious crimes such as murder at considerably different rates.

The FBI also publishes crime statistics aggregated by race: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#57

Post by unionpivo »

mruts wrote: post #33
maxehmookau wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retirement at 55 and drawing a full salary until death is more than fair for the level of stress being a prison guard involves. It's dangerous work. Thank goodness for unions!

More than fair? Fair is what the free market decides someone should be paid. And according to google, for private prisons “fair” is a median salary of $32,000/year.

Unions are part of free market.

They optimize for benefits to their members, just as corporations optimize for benefits for their shareholders.

And just as businesses who get to big can abuse their monopoly status, big unions can also have negative consequences.

This is free market at work.

Edit: Which is why free markets need sensible regulations, to keep abuses from happening

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#58

Post by golergka »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #37
dabbledash wrote: post #16

Not commenting on the specific numbers, but maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that a year of college costs less than food, housing, healthcare, security, and programs combined?

As a non-American, what I find mostly surprising are these two things: 1) that a society that mostly believes that a system of private businesses competing in a free market is the be all and end all of optimal resource allocation end up having the most expensive health care, higher education and apparently, prison system in the world; that this fact does not trigger more thought and discussion; 2) that despite incarc…

> optimal resource allocation

This is a strange assumption. As a free market proponent and almost a libertarian, I don't base my argument on "optimal resource allocation", neither care that much for it; I assume that most economically right-wing people don't pursue this as a main goal either, and rather see it as a nice side effect.

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#59

Post by andy_ppp »

AshishBora wrote: post #56
andy_ppp wrote: post #26

Might as well just give people the money as long as they don't re-offend?

Bad idea. This gives an incentive to start committing crimes to get free money for life.

What if the crime rate overall (and cost to the tax payer) ended up being substantially reduced with this system, would you still be against it?

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#60

Post by fxj »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #47
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-American, what I find mostly surprising are these two things: 1) that a society that mostly believes that a system of private businesses competing in a free market is the be all and end all of optimal resource allocation end up having the most expensive health care, higher education and apparently, prison system in the world; that this fact does not trigger more thought and discussion; 2) that despite incarc…

1. None of the things you listed are anywhere near a free market in the US. You've created a compelling argument against government intervention, actually. 2. I agree with the second point. The US government officially does, too. Prison should be about rehabilitation and not retribution. It's just that the government doesn't act like it agrees.

If this is a compelling argument against gouvernment intervention, then why does it work so much better in europe where all three sectors are state-owned? The best example is switzerland, where the costs are a fraction of the costs in the U.S ( and which is not a "socialist" country at all).
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