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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

#111

Post by bdowling »

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…

> For-profit prisons with state minimum occupancy clauses.

That kind of clause is common for a supply contract (e.g., Buyer promises to purchase goods/services from supplier, minimum order of X units per year.). If a state purchased more units from a prison service provider than it needed, then I can imagine that state trying to re-sell the services to a neighboring state, but I can’t imagine them locking up more people so that they don’t have to pay for unused services. If that happens then a state should just negotiate its contracts differently in the future.

The other stuff I agree with you on.

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

#112

Post by kfksbxbksl »

tmpz22 wrote: post #26
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.

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

I mean the UK gov wants to send people who came over in boats for France to Rwanda for “processing”. Not quite the same but not far off!

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

#115

Post by hello390 »

metadat wrote: post #68
wizofaus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not clear how that's relevant to the comment you were replying to, unless you're suggesting that being jailed for minor controlled substance offenses is far more common in the US than the many other developed countries with similar laws?

Correct. It's a statistic many people are not aware of. Additionally, if you look at the racial breakdown of who's incarcerated in the USA, it's disproportionately black relative to number of blacks per capita residing in the country. Blacks are incarcerated at 5x the rate of whites, and make up 40% of all incarcerated individuals. This is insane.

No post body was provided.

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

#116

Post by erdos4d »

At some point American has to shut down this horrible failed experiment with mass incarceration. I feel like I'm watching the end stages of it where they try to make it as absurd as possible and get the last bit of cash out of everyone. I sincerely hope this whole system collapses soon.

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

#117

Post by HellsMaddy »

punnerud wrote: post #39

In Norway you earn money in prison, and we still have lower percentage of people in prison.

It's almost like burdening people who have been to prison with immense debt makes them *more* likely to end up back in prison; allowing them work, learn and improve skills, and save up some money for getting back on their feet makes them *less* likely to end up back in prison. Who would've thought?!

It almost seems like someone wants people in prison, as if someone is profiting off of it or something. Hmmmm....

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

#118

Post by standardUser »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #94
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…

Plenty of countries, especially in Asia, but also the UAE and possibly others, have successfully stopped nearly all drug use and trade with heavy-handed policies. You may not like what it took to get done, but it did work. I'm not advocating for the heavy-handed approach, but it's intellectually dishonest to say that it can't work. Also, the other countries have done it with a much smaller imprisonment per capita.

It is intellectually dishonest to say drug prohibition can work in the United States. It has been tried and has failed comprehensively and over multiple generations.

You are making a very different argument - that if the US was an entirely different type of society with a different government, culture and history, then this approach might work.

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

#119

Post by missedthecue »

wizofaus wrote: post #58
tmpz22 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 2 MILLION prisoners in the US prison population of a population of 330M. This gives the USA the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The next four? * Rwanda * Turkmenistan * El Salvador * Cuba [1]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarcera...

Not clear how that's relevant to the comment you were replying to, unless you're suggesting that being jailed for minor controlled substance offenses is far more common in the US than the many other developed countries with similar laws?

Only 4.5% of US inmates are in prison for drug possession. I do wonder what the rate is for other countries.

Shocking that 55% of inmates are in for violent crimes such as murder, rape, and manslaughter.

source: https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population...

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

#120

Post by akudha »

rileymat2 wrote: post #104
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…

I am not sure how you are judging the effectiveness of the prohibition? With the legalization of marijuana consumption has gone up. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220719162133.h... So to say they failed is not fact, very few laws eliminate the act that is illegal. Murder happens despite being illegal, and will continue to. I would agree the cost is too high, that the policy is wrong, but it is pretty c…

Murder happens despite being illegal, and will continue to

I don’t understand how you can compare murder with drug use (or even selling drugs). Nobody says “let me try murder today and see if I like it” but plenty of people say (and do) “let me try drugs for fun today and see if I like it”.

Not all illegal activities are the same.

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