231–240 of 410 posts
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Going a step further, we can reduce costs by funding social services that help prevent people from ending up in prison in the first place. I agree with your assessment of our Calvinist thinking.
In Germany are about 1/3 people in prison because they used a train or bus without ticket. If you can't pay you will end up in prison. Imagine how much money this does cost.
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> What's the big deal? People on HN explore adjacent topics quite frequently, and the idea that both police and prisons exist to exert power over (and frequently choose to exercise violence upon) the population is a very common and uncontroversial feeling. It's popular right now to bash the police as corrupt and as not having people's best interest at heart. But the fact is that those are only some of the police. And…
> some police officers have done bad things all police officers are bad The flaw here is that there are countless examples of one police officer doing something terrible, and an entire department rallying around them in support. Or the opposite - like Adrian Schoolcraft attempting to blow the whistle, and being terrorized by the NYPD as a result. The police generally do suck, and in the US at least they cost a lot of…
I feel like the prison system is the victim of perverse incentives. The goal given to them is "house this person securely for a specific length of time at the lowest cost possible ". They are rewarded for cutting costs. But the total cost we pay is the cost to imprison this person the second and third time when they re-offend. It's the policing costs when they're homeless because they can't find housing or get a job.…
According to federal data the average annual cost per prisoner in federal prisons is about $115,000. Thought experiment: Imagine that instead of that, we identified people likely to become criminals, using all that new fangled crime prediction AI that police forces are so excited about. Then just given them say half that amount as UBI, so $50,000/year and say you can have this as long as you don't do crime. Peoples l…
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Regarding the recidivism in this analysis [1], the US doesn't look totally out of place vs European countries that consider prison's core reason to be rehabilitation (e.g. Denmark, Germany). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/
Which suggests that the US's longer sentences and higher incarceration rate are unnecessary for reducing recidivism, which is often what's argued as justification (keep those people off the streets, etc).
I think generally you can't compare the US with European countries on many things. The US are much more individualist, wealth is much less equally distributed, the population is much more diverse, there's still a lot of the frontier mindset. That'll create a different profile which you can see in e.g. entrepreneurship, and probably also in crime-rate.
I feel like the prison system is the victim of perverse incentives. The goal given to them is "house this person securely for a specific length of time at the lowest cost possible ". They are rewarded for cutting costs. But the total cost we pay is the cost to imprison this person the second and third time when they re-offend. It's the policing costs when they're homeless because they can't find housing or get a job.…
According to federal data the average annual cost per prisoner in federal prisons is about $115,000. Thought experiment: Imagine that instead of that, we identified people likely to become criminals, using all that new fangled crime prediction AI that police forces are so excited about. Then just given them say half that amount as UBI, so $50,000/year and say you can have this as long as you don't do crime. Peoples l…
But I agree with the thrust of the idea - investing that money in reducing factors that would cause people to turn to crime is a good idea. I assume it's already being done but maybe not as effectively as we would hope?
I feel like the prison system is the victim of perverse incentives. The goal given to them is "house this person securely for a specific length of time at the lowest cost possible ". They are rewarded for cutting costs. But the total cost we pay is the cost to imprison this person the second and third time when they re-offend. It's the policing costs when they're homeless because they can't find housing or get a job.…
According to federal data the average annual cost per prisoner in federal prisons is about $115,000. Thought experiment: Imagine that instead of that, we identified people likely to become criminals, using all that new fangled crime prediction AI that police forces are so excited about. Then just given them say half that amount as UBI, so $50,000/year and say you can have this as long as you don't do crime. Peoples l…
Also, I think you might be missing how impulsive criminals can be... murder is often a crime of passion.
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I fully agree he earned punishment and it was a serious crime. (he says the gun was never loaded but that's neither here nor there). My question is the scope and breadth of the punishment and whether the system is about restitution and rehabilitation or pure punitive action. How do people come out after 10+ years having received no training, support or rehabilitation and step into a completely changed society from wh…
In a politer society with more reasonable laws using a gun to take someone's money would have exactly one outcome: a 9mm hole in that robber's head. Anything beyond that is charity.
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According to federal data the average annual cost per prisoner in federal prisons is about $115,000. Thought experiment: Imagine that instead of that, we identified people likely to become criminals, using all that new fangled crime prediction AI that police forces are so excited about. Then just given them say half that amount as UBI, so $50,000/year and say you can have this as long as you don't do crime. Peoples l…
Better yet, just give everybody a UBI sufficient for the basics, then we don't need to spend money on any newfangled AI bullshit.