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At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

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Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#81

Post by yeeyeeyee »

rzazueta wrote: post #63
yeeyeeyee wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Supporters say the collections are a legitimate way for states to recoup millions of taxpayer dollars spent on prisons and jails. Wait there are supporters of this? You're telling me if I asked 100 people on the street, there'd be someone that said "oh yeah this is a pretty fair and reasonable law to charge the inmates 5-star hotel prices"??

Depends on how you ask the question. "Is it fair to incarcerate individuals for their preference of intoxicant in a free and liberal democracy?" "Should drug users and other junkies be taken off the streets to keep them safe for the rest of us?"

That's not my question. There's exactly one way to ask my question.

"Do you think prisoners should be charged $250/night for their incarceration?"

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#83

Post by ben_w »

Method-X wrote: post #42
tmpz22 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outsourcing prisons to cheaper authoritarian countries sounds like a bad idea.

My god, please don't give the US any ideas!

"the transportation of convicts to his Majesty's colonies and plantations in America ... is found to be attended with various inconveniences," - one of the ways the British parliament described the American war of independence, Marilyn C. Baseler, "Asylum for Mankind": America, 1607-1800, p.124-127 via Wikipedia.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#84

Post by rzazueta »

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #60
standardUser wrote: post #13

What drives me absolutely insane about stories like this is that so many of the people suffering under these policies are guilty of little more than market participation. The government strains, at extraordinary expense, to pretend they can stop drugs from being made, bought and sold, but they can't. They simply can't. Countless laws, countless billions of dollars and countless ruined lives later, drugs are no less p…

Swap “drugs” for “guns” and you’d have the majority of HN flip out. The Government isn’t a magical entity of absolute perfection. Large classes of banned substances are indeed banned for good reason. Their effects on individual/societal well being documented quite heavily. Two things can be true at the same time: 1. Some substances that are detrimental to human health need to be controlled. 2. The US government and i…

> 1. Some substances that are detrimental to human health need to be controlled.

I'd rather the law be more around information than control. If one believes in the idea of freedom and liberty in the US, then one should support a model where individuals are allowed to make their own decisions, but ensure the facts around such substances are well researched and publicized.

Alcohol kills, and yet is not actually very well controlled at all. Marijuana doesn't kill anyone directly, and yet the lies told about it has kept it tightly controlled, even as the real facts continue to come out.

I don't believe the government really has any obligation to keep us safe from our own poor decisions, assuming those poor decisions can be argued to be have been informed using truthful information.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#85

Post by LewisVerstappen »

diroussel wrote: post #74
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are actions by a government... "the free market"?

The “/s” is Internet forum code for “sarcasm” which is a type of humour. This indicates the author knows it’s not true, but perhaps thinks it’s it would be funny if it was true.

Okay he edited and added the /s after my comment.

Lmao there's definitely a ton of people who would make that comment unironically.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#86

Post by superchroma »

arcticbull wrote: post #7

Every day I find new reason to believe the American penal system unconscionable. Not only is slavery permitted, the US is the subject of the ire of the United Nations over it (the ILO, specifically). For-profit prisons with state minimum occupancy clauses. Charging prisoners for their time there. And one of the highest incarceration levels and worst recidivism rates in the world. What exactly is the point of any of t…

Also, don't forget that in Alabama, there's no air conditioning in the prison, and prisoners are left to swelter.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#87

Post by ben_w »

sapientiae3 wrote: post #33
nickdothutton wrote: post #21

In the UK it costs the taxpayer about $60K per year per prisoner to keep them locked up, according to official figures. However if you take the overall annual budget for the prison service and divide by the number of prisoners I think the figure is closer to $100K. I’ve often wondered what the cost might be to house that population somewhere else, somewhere less expensive, like Turkey or Greece.

Isn’t that what the UK did with Australia?

And America, before the tea started to hit the salt water.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#88

Post by throwaway0a5e »

mrkurt wrote: post #69
DisjointedHunt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swap “drugs” for “guns” and you’d have the majority of HN flip out. The Government isn’t a magical entity of absolute perfection. Large classes of banned substances are indeed banned for good reason. Their effects on individual/societal well being documented quite heavily. Two things can be true at the same time: 1. Some substances that are detrimental to human health need to be controlled. 2. The US government and i…

You can really only swap drugs for guns if gun related imprisonment is high. Are there are lot of people in prison for illegal gun possession / dealing?

Are there are lot of people in prison for illegal gun possession / dealing?

Yes. Tons of petty criminals and low level nonviolent felons are behind bars because whatever they were doing it they did it while packing heat or had a gun in their possession when their door got kicked in.

Packing while committing some other crime is a felony by itself in many places and in the case of federal crimes (e.g. drug trafficking) a multiplicative effect on your max sentence and raises the minimum by a ton. Many/most states also have laws that copy the federal law.

This is why why drug dealers who've made it big pay someone else to pack for them and/or store their product as soon as their business can support that.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#89

Post by superchroma »

unstatusthequo wrote: post #55
arcticbull wrote: post #7

Every day I find new reason to believe the American penal system unconscionable. Not only is slavery permitted, the US is the subject of the ire of the United Nations over it (the ILO, specifically). For-profit prisons with state minimum occupancy clauses. Charging prisoners for their time there. And one of the highest incarceration levels and worst recidivism rates in the world. What exactly is the point of any of t…

Oh come on now. There are MUCH worse prison and criminal justice systems. Let me name a few where I’d not want to be: 1) all of Russia; 2) Sabaneta Prison, Maracaibo, Venezuela; 3) North Korean Camp 22; 4) Diyarbakir Prison, Turkey; 5) Gitarama Prison, Rwanda; 6) Gldani Prison, Georgia; 7) Ciudad Barrios Prison, El Salvador There are many more. These above make the pay to stay seem tame in terms of impact.

It's not a race to the bottom. There are MUCH better ones as well, and maybe we should be striving to be enlightened instead of being better than a couple of shitholes.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#90

Post by zozbot234 »

pydry wrote: post #59
standardUser wrote: post #13

What drives me absolutely insane about stories like this is that so many of the people suffering under these policies are guilty of little more than market participation. The government strains, at extraordinary expense, to pretend they can stop drugs from being made, bought and sold, but they can't. They simply can't. Countless laws, countless billions of dollars and countless ruined lives later, drugs are no less p…

If you assume that the original intent was to find the most socially acceptable way to criminalize minorities and "social undesirables" (e.g. hippies) and go all in on it, it makes a lot more sense.

You might assume that, but it would be a questionable assumption. Opium was banned in China (where is was used by ordinary denizens of that country, not minorities) well before the West followed suit.
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