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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

#441

Post by changchuming »

anongraddebt wrote: post #431
sangnoir wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unstated argument to all the homogeneity arguments I've come across (intended or not) is: "We are too bigoted for that to work here, we'd never allow the $OUTGROUP to have it that good", with a side-dish of "they'd be bigoted too, if they weren't homogeneous". When laid bare, it's an appeal to ignorance.

I can't speak for all those who've made homogeneity arguments, but I've made them before in the context of Norway and will say this: Often, you'll hear people say something like, "Norway did X and it works, so we should do X in the U.S." These are typically fairly naive claims. Regardless of the normative dimension of the claim (whether X is worth doing in the U.S. in the first place), there is a non-trivial amount o…

Western democracies love to talk about Norway, but in my native Singapore, which has a comparable population to Norway, crime rate is way lower than Norway. Yet we have some of the most draconian laws ever which run antithetical to the liberal ideals in Norway. Fact is, a country with a small population is much easier to control than a country the size of US or China.

We also have a much more diverse population than Norway, so if anything, US should be looking towards us for inspiration.

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

#442

Post by dang »

ericfrenkiel wrote: post #413
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)

[flagged]

Whoa. Personal attacks are not ok here, regardless of how wrong someone else is. Maybe you don't owe them any better, but you owe the community here much better.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#443

Post by dang »

anilakar wrote: post #71
fxj wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

[flagged]

Please do not take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. The resulting threads are all the same: predictable, boring, and nasty. Not what we want here at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#444

Post by dang »

minikites wrote: post #188
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "an activist group" I mean people who confuse work with slavery. People in prison eat what they're given, sleep when they're told, have (almost) no personal property and are at mercy of the administration on many other issues. Work is one of the greatest things a human being can do. Working doesn't make an otherwise free person a slave.

>Work is one of the greatest things a human being can do. Would you say that "work sets you free"?

Please don't do this here.

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

#445

Post by fireant »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #334
europsucks wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exactly, though? If other companies can satisfy the needs of the state, why not prisons? You wouldn't mandate that governments should build their own cars, for example?

Monopoly on violence [1] is held by the state as it should be, otherwise we have vigilante justice and I think we can all agree that's bad. In my opinion (and we can certainly debate this point) this should never be outsourced to third party entities. A rent-a-cop in a mall should not have the power to arrest customers (or even search their belongings) without calling the cops. Outsourcing such functions have the inh…

US has been glorifying violent vigilantes in popular media for at least 50 years. Vigilante superhero movies are one of the most selling every year.

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

#446

Post by fgonzag »

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 I were in charge of creating a new prison system, I'd do mandatory schooling and psychological counseling. I know that's very very expensive, the thinking being here that you'd get recidivism so low that you'd really only have to have small prisons. I'm talking placement tests and actual schooling. Can't read, teach him to read. Community labor, get them attached to people. Get a job placement program.

We could actually work towards reducing crime, but we as a society want punishment too much to allow it.

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

#447

Post by rmellow »

piva00 wrote: post #306
everdev wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recidivism is very low. Anders Breivik got 21 years for killing 77 people. Are you worried about when he gets out in 2033?

He very likely won't ever get out. He is allowed to have his case reviewed after 21 years (as it's how life in prison works in some European countries such as Norway, Sweden and Germany, not sure about others) but realistically he will never be out even if he's reformed as it will be a danger for his own life if he is back into the general population.

UK as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Her_Majesty%27s_pleasure

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

#448

Post by anongraddebt »

changchuming wrote: post #441
anongraddebt wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for all those who've made homogeneity arguments, but I've made them before in the context of Norway and will say this: Often, you'll hear people say something like, "Norway did X and it works, so we should do X in the U.S." These are typically fairly naive claims. Regardless of the normative dimension of the claim (whether X is worth doing in the U.S. in the first place), there is a non-trivial amount o…

Western democracies love to talk about Norway, but in my native Singapore, which has a comparable population to Norway, crime rate is way lower than Norway. Yet we have some of the most draconian laws ever which run antithetical to the liberal ideals in Norway. Fact is, a country with a small population is much easier to control than a country the size of US or China. We also have a much more diverse population than…

Interesting. In the past, I had never considered Singapore in this regard.

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

#449

Post by iamgopal »

llamataboot wrote: post #264
bluedino wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 iss…

This is true. Being poor for prolonged time fuck with your mindset and rationality, their basic rationale of what's good is cloudy at best. Adult education of rationality for prisoners and underprivileged is where these resources should go.

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

#450

Post by iamgopal »

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…

Prevention should also apply to health care system but that we overlook in the name of freedom of choice.
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