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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

#261

Post by insertcredit »

foobarian wrote: post #196
lb1lf wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rehabilitation IS societally useful. However, it does require that the prime focus is rehabilitation rather than punishment. In my native Norway, rehabilitation has been the focus to such an extent that foreign media come to do stories on the 'holiday camps' prison time is served in. It somehow works, though. Recidivism is very low. Here's a few examples on how inmates do their time -Education is encouraged - whether…

I feel the difference is that Norway is far more homogeneous and the intent to rehabilitate is sincere. On the other hand I feel like a lot of the criminal justice system in the USA is segregationist under the covers. When you look at it this way then it's working as desired.

Also much lower IQs in the US prison population compared to Norway's. Combine that with the gangs in the US that effectively rule the prison system - is there such a thing as a shot caller in Norway ? - and there is no hope for any sort of rehabilitation to take place.

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

#262

Post by conanbatt »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #152
countryqt30 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prison startup: you pay the government, not the government you. You then force the people to CREATE VALUE and work for other labor-intensive work (e.g. cleaning, construction, ...)

There will always be an activist group which will tell you that forcing people work is inhumane and violates their freedom of expression.

What is actually terrible is that they are paid a dollar an hour, even if they are fighting fires and dying from it.

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

#263

Post by Justsignedup »

dalbasal wrote: post #126

I think it's worth thinking about the history of incarceration, for context. Until fairly recently, prison wasn't really the way most punishments worked. They did hangings, beatings, shaming, banishment... Imprisoning people long term is expensive, and kings probably couldn't have afforded anything like a modern scale prison system. The closest thing was more slavery than imprisonment, and economically self-sufficien…

> I think it's debatable, after generations of experience, that prisons make people more criminal. At the very least, rehabilitation doesn't work very well

I agree until this point you made.

We know the "modern prison system" is a very loose term dictated by "where" much more than just an abstract idea. In places like the Netherlands they have so few prisoners they had to close down prisons.

There are certainly a group of people who cannot be easily re-introduced to society: People who commit premeditated murder, rapists, pedophiles, serial killers, mass-murderers, terrorists. But this accounts for a fairly small percent of the prison population.

Most prisoners can fall into a few categories: Stupid, No other means of decent survival, Drugs.

I'll tackle these in order of ease:

- Drugs - This has been shown to be the easiest to solve. Giving prisoners the option of avoiding their entire sentence in exchange for rehab and support group attendance has been INCREDIBLY effective.

- No other means of decent survival - A.k.a. poverty. This feeds the drug problem too. People need: Food, Shelter, Entertainment. Boredom is the cause of too many kids, drug use, and theft of goods. Giving these people a decent base education and job placement programs can be orders of magnitude more efficient.

- Stupid - This can cause the other problems too, but I include in here a lack of self control. Many times this can be solved with education, job placement, emotional control education, etc. There are ways to rehabilitate these people into society.

Instead of everything I said, we treat marijuana arrests in the USA worse than many cases of murder, rape, fraud. We need sane laws here.

Furthermore the real criminals that cause a ton of subsequent crime is financial fraudsters. We call it "white collar criminals" who get at best a slap on the wrists -- Steal 20 mil? Go to jail for a few years. Have a bag of weed? Go to jail for 10 years. These white collar criminals are the ones that need punishment the most. They cause so much subsequent crime, and they always believe they both deserve what they do and can get away with it. These are the ones we need to lock away for the longest of times.

And finally the privatization of prisons. So much on that. But basically, if you run a prison as a business, it is 100% not in your interest to prevent future crime, but rather to ensure the prisoners (your cash cows) never leave.

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

#264

Post by llamataboot »

bluedino wrote: post #200
sethammons wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most crime is likely related to being poor, but this case shows someone who chronically chooses crime, even when they had a job. How do you "fix" that? There are people who will work hard to avoid being good. There are people who enjoy being bad, who enjoy hurting others, who enjoy screwing over others. How do you fix that? I'd contend that the best thing to do is remove those people from society. The American system…

>> Most crime is likely related to being poor Some crime could be. Theft, burglary. But Assualt? Motor vehicle theft? DUI? Murder? Weapons violations? Vandalism? Child abuse?

Possibly don't think about being poor in the context of just "needing more resources".

Think about it in the context of having much different risk/reward calculations for all activities, much higher stress levels, much worse access to health care, much higher levels of self-medication, higher sense of futility and unfairness in the world, possibly cognitive/emotional impairments due to unaddressed physical health issues, etc.

Unless you've been poor yourself, especially poor in a rich country, or unless you've worked directly with poor people and learned from them what it is like to live their lives, assume that it's far more difficult to simply /exist/ than you can imagine.

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

#265

Post by conanbatt »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #204
dragonwriter wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By "an activist group" I mean people who confuse work with slavery. You mean, people who confuse forced work with slavery.

I think that depends on definition of "forced". If I stop working, I'll get kicked out of my house and will probably die of hunger. Does it mean I am forced to work?

Its a definition game, but in philosophy and political economy free is "free from other people" not free from nature, as that is impossible.

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

#266

Post by conanbatt »

leetcrew wrote: post #167
minikites wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "an activist group" do you mean "people against actual slavery"?

most people rightly oppose slavery. but confining people to cages for years at a time is pretty bad too. if it's possible to justify imprisonment in the first place, are all forms of forced labor significantly worse? what if the prisoners get training as webdevs and have to spend 6-8 hours on weekdays improving the UI of government websites. they get an aeron chair, free coffee, ping pong, etc., and when they get rel…

The thing is that then the warden sells of the inmates to make money on himself or through the state.

California paid inmates fighting fires a dollar an hour.

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

#267

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

hourislate wrote: post #197
digianarchist wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7 years for something that would have probably gotten him 6-12 months in Europe/Canada. When are the Americans going to realise you can't punitively punish someone and not reap of profound negative consequences (re-offending, home-breaking etc.).

What about the man in Toronto who shooed away a Raccoon with a broom? He had to fight for his life to avoid jail and payed a pretty hefty fine. https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2013/03/12/man_who_attack... Canada is very light on it's criminals. Child Molesters, Rapists and even murderers tend to spend little time behind bars with little consequence for their actions. Here is another article about how broken Canadi…

>Nguyen, 55, pleaded guilty at Old City Hall court to beating three baby raccoons with a shovel, probably killing one and breaking another’s foreleg, because they were destroying his garden in 2011.

He beat the living tar out of living creatures instead of dealing with them humanely - yeah, that should be punished.

> The media won't even tell you the animals name or anything about him.

Why would you need his name? Has he even been found guilty yet?

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

#268

Post by JustSomeNobody »

dalbasal wrote: post #126

I think it's worth thinking about the history of incarceration, for context. Until fairly recently, prison wasn't really the way most punishments worked. They did hangings, beatings, shaming, banishment... Imprisoning people long term is expensive, and kings probably couldn't have afforded anything like a modern scale prison system. The closest thing was more slavery than imprisonment, and economically self-sufficien…

> Prison startup?

We don't need another CCA.

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

#269

Post by mch82 »

kybernetikos wrote: post #221
dalbasal wrote: post #126

I think it's worth thinking about the history of incarceration, for context. Until fairly recently, prison wasn't really the way most punishments worked. They did hangings, beatings, shaming, banishment... Imprisoning people long term is expensive, and kings probably couldn't have afforded anything like a modern scale prison system. The closest thing was more slavery than imprisonment, and economically self-sufficien…

I do find it interesting that probably many of these people would not commit crime if they were paid $50k per year to not commit crime (which would save money!). Unfortunately you could never do this as an actual policy because of the incentives, it's just interesting that they end up forcing us to spend so much money so unproductively. I absolutely believe that there is room for something innovative to be done here,…

Interesting observation. Can you elaborate on the “could neve do this because of incentives” caveat?

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

#270

Post by rtpg »

foobarian wrote: post #196
lb1lf wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rehabilitation IS societally useful. However, it does require that the prime focus is rehabilitation rather than punishment. In my native Norway, rehabilitation has been the focus to such an extent that foreign media come to do stories on the 'holiday camps' prison time is served in. It somehow works, though. Recidivism is very low. Here's a few examples on how inmates do their time -Education is encouraged - whether…

I feel the difference is that Norway is far more homogeneous and the intent to rehabilitate is sincere. On the other hand I feel like a lot of the criminal justice system in the USA is segregationist under the covers. When you look at it this way then it's working as desired.

Why do you think the intention to rehabilitate in the US isn’t sincere?

Frontline did a report on people on parole. It’s a punishing system, even when you’re out of the systems you’re usually one drink away from being thrown back in

It’s a very good example of something where all the individual players are trying, but so much of how the system works makes results be harsh and cruel

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