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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

#151

Post by selectodude »

Akronymus wrote: post #109
xfitm3 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portugal is an excellent role model, there are numerous studies on their approach to drugs[0]. While I am not an expert on the subject the model is morally appealing to me, and I believe public order is maintained. Begin researching on your own if you're interested in this subject. I feel for anyone who loves a drug user. Separately I just learned fentanyl test strips are not legal in all 50 states. Given that fentan…

Quoted post unavailable.

Have you ever even taken an opiate?

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

#153

Post by bobthepanda »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #73
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"??

Based on the comments in the "NYC is owed a bajillion dollars in parking tickets" thread from a couple days ago I bet you could get an easy dozen if you just dropped the phrase "five star hotel prices". People are strongly in favor of harsh punishments for the type of crimes they don't ever see themselves committing, like not paying a ticket apparently.

The NYC parking tickets thing has a few other dimensions, like the fact that the worst scofflaws are actually the diplomatic corps of other countries (there for the UN) that claim immunity to avoid having to pay the tickets. So not only do you get to bash elites, they’re other country’s elites and not countries that the US has warm relations with.

There was actually a sigh of relief in many circles when New York lost the 2012 Olympics bid, because many people did not see the benefit of holding the games being worth the massive headaches of infrastructure overload.

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

#154

Post by standardUser »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #143
standardUser wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a gun often has a victim. A seriously injured or dead victim. Getting high does not. That difference cannot be overstated.

With fentanyl being so potent these days and most guns never winding up killing anybody I wouldn't be surprised if the body count per "retail transaction" wasn't on the same order. This isn't your 70s hippie weed or 80s crack. Dealing in hard drugs these days is a business with a pretty high body count due to the low LD50 of the substances involved. It's like the addictive substances equivalent of giving dynamite to…

Impure drugs are a consequence of drug prohibition.

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

#155

Post by selectodude »

ok_dad wrote: post #141
missedthecue wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Source, please, that just seems incorrect. That would mean for 2mm prisoners there would be 1.1mm murderers, rapists, and manslaughterers. That seems like way too large a number to be realistic with the declining rate of murder, rape, and manslaughter.

There are literally hundreds of crimes that are neither drug possession or “murder, rape, and manslaughter.”

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

#156

Post by [deleted] »

djitz wrote: post #30
api wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too knew nothing about this and honestly find that frightening. How many other grotesquely perverse laws are on the books? Someone needs to create a hall of shame for these laws index by federal and for every state. This is perverse on so many levels. It’s not only ongoing punishment but it disincentivizes people from getting their lives in order and probably increases recidivism rates quite a bit. So in the end I…

Sadly, it gets much worse the more you look into it. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/17/pennsylvania...

[deleted]

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

#157

Post by [deleted] »

Akronymus wrote: post #109
xfitm3 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portugal is an excellent role model, there are numerous studies on their approach to drugs[0]. While I am not an expert on the subject the model is morally appealing to me, and I believe public order is maintained. Begin researching on your own if you're interested in this subject. I feel for anyone who loves a drug user. Separately I just learned fentanyl test strips are not legal in all 50 states. Given that fentan…

Quoted post unavailable.

[deleted]

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

#158

Post by throwaway0a5e »

gregsadetsky wrote: post #133
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just to be clear, “heavy-handed policies” include the death penalty for trafficking in (at the very least) Singapore and the UAE. It would be intellectually dishonest to not name these things by name. This argument veers a little bit into “sure it’s harsh but their trains do run on time” territory, at least for me. What authoritarian countries are able to achieve at the cost of human rights would preferably not serve…

And "trafficking" is defined to include things like "possessing the amount of weed HN types by for themselves to get the bulk discount" not just "getting on a plane with bags of coke strapped to you.

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

#159

Post by thifhi »

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.

I just checked the official annual budget for all of the penal institutions in Turkey. The 2022 budget is 3.2 Billion Liras[1] ($180M) for about 300.000 inmates in total. Dividing, you get about $600 per inmate per year! (and honestly it doesn't even sound that absurd considering the low cost of living here)

[1]: https://www.sbb.gov.tr/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2022_Yili_...

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