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

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

#341

Post by kstenerud »

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…

If you want to see how a justice system can work reasonably well, including when incarceration occurs, look to countries in western Europe.

America is pretty close to the bottom of the pile when it comes to their justice and incarceration system, to the point that their allies are actually refusing extradition requests on account that "US prisons are unconscionable and medieval." [1]

The very idea of locking someone up for more than 10-15 years is crazy enough. Add in the bail system, plea bargains, elected judges, understaffed public defenders, civil forfeiture, private prisons, prison labor, disenfranchisement, onerous and obtuse probation conditions, pre-trial incarceration (this is the absolute worst), and you have a system that actively causes injustice at every turn, and ensures high recidivism by producing a population with nothing to lose, nothing to live for, and the sword of Damocles ever hanging over them.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/british-hacker-wont-be-extradited-to-the...

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

#342

Post by tw04 »

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…

> At the very least, rehabilitation doesn't work very well.

Citation please? For serial murderers or serial rapists - OK. Probably a screw loose. For drug abusers and the associated foibles that go with it (theft, prostitution, etc) - why would you suggest rehabilitation can't work?

That's ignoring the societal pressures of kids who have no means to sustain themselves beyond illegal activities - just assuming that they wouldn't act different if given the choice is... quite pessimistic.

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

#343

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

hourislate wrote: post #327
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? Ha…

Well he was caught killing the young child. Don't you think the public deserves to know who he is? How guilty does one need to be? https://globalnews.ca/news/5018332/police-on-scene-of-seriou... > When police arrived minutes later, they found a man, 29, attacking 17-year-old Jaime Adao with a weapon. In order to stop the attack, police had to shoot the man.

> Well he was caught killing the young child. Don't you think the public deserves to know who he is? How guilty does one need to be?

Proven guilty in a court of law. Until then he's presumed innocent.

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

#344

Post by insertcredit »

simonh wrote: post #338
insertcredit wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The black-white IQ gap in the US is not scientifically disputed. [1] US prisons are ~38% black. [2] Norwegian prisons aren't. Not to mention that in general, and without taking into account race, you don't expect the brightest to be in there. Ergo average IQ in US prisons being much lower than in Norwegian prisons. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_S... [2] https://www.bop.gov/about/stati…

It's disputed that it's due to race, there's a good argument that it's due to culture and culture can change.

The cause of the black-white IQ gap is not relevant to this thread - not sure why you brought it up - . The fact is that the gap exists and of course one would expect it to exist in the US prison population too thus the rest of my argument naturally follows. The crux of the matter being that rehabilitation works for Norway today but wouldn't work for US (today-near future). Cultural changes to raise IQs enough to be represented in the US prison population - sounds like a moon shot - is an entirely different discussion.

Keep the downvotes coming!

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

#345

Post by monocasa »

insertcredit wrote: post #302
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could not possibly have any proof to back up this racist statement.

The black-white IQ gap in the US is not scientifically disputed. [1] US prisons are ~38% black. [2] Norwegian prisons aren't. Not to mention that in general, and without taking into account race, you don't expect the brightest to be in there. Ergo average IQ in US prisons being much lower than in Norwegian prisons. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_S... [2] https://www.bop.gov/about/stati…

The IQ tests are quite a bit more culturally specific than people generally assume.

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

#346

Post by Faaak »

ujhmi6 wrote: post #10
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…

What's wrong with the numbers of recidivism? A criminal is a criminal, he can't help it; I don't know why people think that keeping them locked up could ever fix that. Probably nothing can, maybe medication.

I robbed things when I was young. Yet I consider myself successful now and no longer a criminal.

So yes, people change. And fuck your mindset

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

#347

Post by fvdessen »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #198
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…

In Britain under the Bloody Code, you could (and would) be hanged, or deported for the most trivial offences. The prevailing view was very much of the pour encourager les autres mould. Steal items worth 12 pence? Hanged. Lesser amount? Cut a hand off. If lucky, commuted and deported for indentured servitude in the colonies. Treason? Hanged, drawn and quartered. As we remember from history classes, stealing, murder an…

> What works? Not prisons, not punishment, but rehabilitation.

Prisons & harsh punishment seems to work quite well in Singapore; they have one of the lowest crime rate in the world.

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

#348

Post by coldtea »

vkhorikov wrote: post #321
coldtea wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, just like you could point to cases where socialism did work? (E.g. changing the equality laws for men and women, rapidly industrializing an agrarian Russia, leading China to top global economy from a century plus slump, letting Cuba have a top notch and cost effective hospital system, and so on)

Every single one of what you listed is either FUD or not an accomplishment of socialism. Specifically: - Cuba's hospitals are not top notch, to say the least. - Russia did the rapid industrializing but it already was on this way before the revolution and would be much better off should the socialist revolution never occurred. - The equality laws for men and women are not due to socialism. - China enjoyed the economic…

>- Cuba's hospitals are not top notch, to say the least

Cuba's doctors are excellent. And their healthcare is a marvel compared to their Latin American "free market" equivalents. And let's not even compare cost/benefit ratio to the US one (I obviously don't care if a millionaire can get better high end machines in a US hospital -- for the price of a Central Park overlooking condo or two). They key healthcare indicators are telling:

https://www.georgetownjournalofinternationalaffairs.org/onli...

>- Russia did the rapid industrializing but it already was on this way before the revolution and would be much better off should the socialist revolution never occurred.

If the "socialist revolution never occurred" the push to industrialization would be many times slower, and in all probability Russia would have been defeated and thus a German territory after WWII -- along with all of Eastern Europe if not more. So there's that.

>- The equality laws for men and women are not due to socialism.

"Beginning in October 1918, the Soviet Union liberalized divorce and abortion laws, decriminalized homosexuality, permitted cohabitation, and ushered in a host of reforms that theoretically made women more equal to men." -- Stalin took some of those back, but it took a lot of time for the US to even reach that level (assuming they even have).

>- China enjoyed the economic rise because they freed the marked not because they tied it, it's the opposite of socialism.

China remains a single-party state, with mass government intervention in the economy, and centrally planned activities. Besides, combining an open market with a socialist state is as old as Lenin's NEP.

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

#349

Post by tasuki »

smileysteve wrote: post #294
AshishBora wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The re-offend part might matter. You're on probation, and as long as you're only on probation, you get dividends from the government.

That motivates people to commit one and only one crime. Books get popular describing how to choose the best crime to commit, to maximize the expected value of the crime _plus_ the subsequent dividends.

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

#350

Post by tetraca »

riahi wrote: post #230
mikejb wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that a human can be 'broken', but broken people should get psychiatric care, not prison.

We used to institutionalize people, then we defunded the entire psychiatric infrastructure.

The infrastructure we had was partially disbanded/defunded because asylums frequently subjected patients to inhumane conditions and outright abuse. There were movements in the 70s by ex-patients and their families trying to get people out of the system and living in programs that try to help patients live more independently, because of this.
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