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NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

theintercept.com

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Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#251

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

mden wrote: post #235
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then you would encourage people to have behaviors that trend towards criminal so they would get paid. 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?

> people to have behaviors that trend towards criminal so they would get paid

This won't work because newfangled AI is very smart.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#252

Post by mattmillr »

michael1999 wrote: post #224
mabbo wrote: post #81

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.…

You may be too generous. The slaving mindset lives on, and the goal for private prisons is "how can I make the most money off this captive person". Obscene long-distance rates, pay-per-use computers, and now this proposed mail rule, are all about creating new revenue streams for an extractive business.

The entire US policing & carceral system arguably traces back to slave patrols. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-...

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#253

Post by Tangurena2 »

jeffwask wrote: post #110
mabbo wrote: post #81

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.…

Victim isn't the right word because none of it is accidental. It's intentional design dating all the way back to 13th amendment which states. "The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. " My brother in law was released recently from 12+ years of incarceration in the federal system. His crime was armed robbery, first offense…

The late 1800s and early 1900s exploited this on behalf of White Supremacy. All of the Jim Crow states had laws against vagrancy which were only enforced against "colored" people. If you failed to have a job, local law enforcement would arrest you for "vagrancy" and the prison would rent your body out to work on the "chain gang". Prisoners got paid nothing. The politically connected "good old boys" would get paid for renting out the prisoners.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#254

Post by notch656c »

thebooktocome wrote: post #250
notch656c wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone tried to rob me at gunpoint many years ago. Pointed a gun to my head when I got a flat tire innocently trying to bike home from a bad part of town. Why was I in a bad part of town? Working in a hospital with the people helping the people in a bad part of town. I didn't try to kill them, even though I managed to fight the upper hand off of them. When the scuffle ended all I said was "don't point things at my h…

I’m supposed to take comfort in the fact that you’re more violent in hypothetical situations? The death penalty will always be executed with a certain false positive rate. Willing it as a form of punishment necessarily entails willing the death of innocent people, who crucially can’t be brought back in the event that the state realizes it was mistaken.

You know the process for executing someone is very long, expensive road. Eager is the worst possible description of the death penalty.

There are plenty of criticisms for the death penalty but now you're changing the goalposts as you realize your description written in a science fiction feel good reality was a bad fit.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#255

Post by choward »

squokko wrote: post #242
mabbo wrote: post #81

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.…

Prison creates absolute animals. We shouldn't put people in prison unless they're going to be there for their entire lives. Singapore-style caning is probably much better for both the convict and the broader society -- take the incorrigible violent criminals and lock them up for life without parole, and cane the rest.

Pretty sure they still receive prison sentences in Singapore in addition to caning.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#256

Post by candiodari »

scrollaway wrote: post #159
aqme28 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suddenly prisons are trying to incarcerate the factually innocent, since they're the least likely to "re-offend."

But prisons don’t incarcerate people? They aren’t the ones taking decisions on who goes in there.

You are stating private jails don't control the government. You're right, the opposite is true: government officials control private jails, which means delivering inmates and redirecting profits ...

Last big scandal about large scale wrongful imprisonment - of children, no less - the people profiting from this were:

1) Directly profiting

* the District Attorney

* 2 judges

* the director of ... of the Juvenile Probation Office

* the brother of the District Attorney, who ran the prison

2) Involved, capable of stopping the abuse, not proven to have personally profited, yet they cooperated:

* the district attorney

* a supreme court lawyer

* a supreme court justice personally

* the whole Pennsylvania supreme court

* the governor of Pennsylvania

* Pennsylvania's Judicial Conduct Board

* the FBI

3) the only parties the justice system considered guilty

* the brother of the District Attorney, who ran the prison. Note: he's still in business. The SAME business. He was convicted for a small amount, because he lied about paying off judges. He, and his brother the district attorney, are of course completely innocent of plotting for a decade to wrongfully imprison children, for profit.

The scheme continued for 7 YEARS after complaints about corruption were filed.

The profit has not been paid back.

* the lowest level judges

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

As always, we come to the same point as always: people claiming the government can be trusted, because of $reason. Separation of powers, because of the law, because ... You forget the government is a system made up of people. Guarantees, laws, contracts, achieve nothing the quality of people in government doesn't achieve. And we all know that quality is lacking somewhat. Also, this cannot be fixed by better laws, better such guarantees, any of that ...

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#257

Post by choward »

scrollaway wrote: post #159
aqme28 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suddenly prisons are trying to incarcerate the factually innocent, since they're the least likely to "re-offend."

But prisons don’t incarcerate people? They aren’t the ones taking decisions on who goes in there.

The prison industrial complex has lobbyists who do influence those decisions. They could start focusing on making the penalties harsher for minor crimes.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#258

Post by JamesBarney »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #230
mabbo wrote: post #81

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…

Are you using metrics that are gameable? For instance some predictors of future criminality are past criminality, and education level.

This heavily incentivizes people to commit crimes and drop out of school.

So you are forced to only use metrics that are outside their control such as parent's previous income level. And you'll get nowhere near a 50% false positive rate using only these metrics.

Not to mention all of the frustration felt by their neighbor who is working 40 hours a week and taking home $25,000 a year, while they sit at home playing xbox for 50k a year.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#259

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

georgyo wrote: post #247
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My first gut reaction was $115k/person/year was way too high... But apparently a person in a NYC prison costs $560k/year[1]...That amount of money can definitely do a lot of good to rehabilitate a person. However > we identified people likely to become criminals This tricky, because people will think it is GOOD to marked by the algorithm; key free money! Then these algorithm will likely be used in court as evidence t…

So its a thought experiment and so this AI is very smart, like even better than Microsoft's Tay. And maybe it not just on the person's behavior but also family wealth, living location, history, convictions of family members, and so on. Lots of things that are hard to manipulate or would take generations to do so.

If you are convicted of a crime even if you had this free money, then likely you are doing crime for fun and not out of necessity, so jail is the best place for you.

Cities may actually decline to convict because jailing people is more expensive, so maybe this would be a counter-effect.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#260

Post by JamesBarney »

georgyo wrote: post #247
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My first gut reaction was $115k/person/year was way too high... But apparently a person in a NYC prison costs $560k/year[1]...That amount of money can definitely do a lot of good to rehabilitate a person. However > we identified people likely to become criminals This tricky, because people will think it is GOOD to marked by the algorithm; key free money! Then these algorithm will likely be used in court as evidence t…

For anyone who is wondering why the prison costs 560k/year a big portion of that is the cost per inmate quadrupled due to a dropping prison populations.
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