Prisons or Colleges?
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Prisons or Colleges?
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: Prisons or Colleges?
#2I applaud the Governor's intentions, it is far more sensible to allocate resources to higher education than to prisons.
Having mentioned that, I think it should be stated that he is solving the wrong problem here. The reason tuition is increasing so rapidly in California is because the State no longer has the wherewithal to properly fund its educational institutions. This is a direct consequence of the fact that Californians are able to vote on ballot initiatives obligating that state's government to take on, sometimes quite expensive, commitments. Pair this with the fact that Californians have made increasing their tax burden exceedingly difficult, and you can see the Governor's problem.
That situation is really a mess. Even for prisons, he can't cut spending below a certain amount, or the law enforcement brotherhoods and lobbyists will come after him. He can't decrease the number of people in prison because of the Three Strikes ballot initiative, which obliges him to incarcerate large numbers of nonviolent offenders indefinitely. And the worse part about it is that he needs to do both, decrease spending and the number of incarcerated people.
And that is one of what must be a large number of issues he needs to work through to get the budget on track. Its prisons vs. education, that decision should be the easiest.
I don't envy that State's leaders. People anywhere make democratic leadership challenging but the people of California must be especially difficult to manage.
Re: Prisons or Colleges?
#3I applaud the Governor's intentions, it is far more sensible to allocate resources to higher education than to prisons. Having mentioned that, I think it should be stated that he is solving the wrong problem here. The reason tuition is increasing so rapidly in California is because the State no longer has the wherewithal to properly fund its educational institutions. This is a direct consequence of the fact that Cali…
Sounds like what we really need to do is outsource the prisons. To, say, Mexico, or China. I'll bet the Chinese don't pay $50,000 per prisoner per year to keep their prisoners locked up -- heck, they probably harness their labour to turn a profit.
Re: Prisons or Colleges?
#4Emotionally this sounds appealing.
But it seems to me that htis is just another example of the kind of government that brought California to bankruptcy. Governing by emotional appeals to the way our values tell us the world should behave is not a recipe for success in a world that behaves as the chips fall.
More to the point, read Friedrich Hayek's The Fatal Conceit for a discussion of the hubris of believing that we can engineer a world to our liking, and that this world be at all sustainable.
Re: Prisons or Colleges?
#5Allow the CCPOA to unionize TAs. Problem solved!
Re: Prisons or Colleges?
#6I applaud the Governor's intentions, it is far more sensible to allocate resources to higher education than to prisons. Having mentioned that, I think it should be stated that he is solving the wrong problem here. The reason tuition is increasing so rapidly in California is because the State no longer has the wherewithal to properly fund its educational institutions. This is a direct consequence of the fact that Cali…
Sounds like what we really need to do is outsource the prisons. To, say, Mexico, or China. I'll bet the Chinese don't pay $50,000 per prisoner per year to keep their prisoners locked up -- heck, they probably harness their labour to turn a profit.
You know the sad thing is that the law enforcement interests would probably come after you on that too.
Sad.
Re: Prisons or Colleges?
#7"California spends about $50,000 a year per inmate"
On the surface, that number looks somewhat insane.
Re: Prisons or Colleges?
#8I applaud the Governor's intentions, it is far more sensible to allocate resources to higher education than to prisons. Having mentioned that, I think it should be stated that he is solving the wrong problem here. The reason tuition is increasing so rapidly in California is because the State no longer has the wherewithal to properly fund its educational institutions. This is a direct consequence of the fact that Cali…
Sounds like what we really need to do is outsource the prisons. To, say, Mexico, or China. I'll bet the Chinese don't pay $50,000 per prisoner per year to keep their prisoners locked up -- heck, they probably harness their labour to turn a profit.
Heck, they're probably not a democracy. And probably have no constitution or bill of rights. And probably haven't caught up with the 19th century. And probably disappear people left and right.
Great role model.
Re: Prisons or Colleges?
#9I applaud the Governor's intentions, it is far more sensible to allocate resources to higher education than to prisons. Having mentioned that, I think it should be stated that he is solving the wrong problem here. The reason tuition is increasing so rapidly in California is because the State no longer has the wherewithal to properly fund its educational institutions. This is a direct consequence of the fact that Cali…
Not so minor point: the California Three Strikes law requires the first two felonies to be "violent" or "serious". From the reference I just checked, the only non-violent serious crimes are "lewd or lascivious act on a child under the age of 14 years" and providing hard drugs to minors ("heroin, cocaine, phencyclidine(PCP), or any methamphetamine-related drug" or a precursor of the latter).
I find it impossible to work up any sympathy for someone who commits two such crimes and then shows he has no intention of staying on the right side of the law by committing any felony, violent or not. I also don't see how it's bad public policy; as one person put it WRT Giuliani's clean up of New York City: "He found the root cause of crime, criminals."
Re: Prisons or Colleges?
#10I applaud the Governor's intentions, it is far more sensible to allocate resources to higher education than to prisons. Having mentioned that, I think it should be stated that he is solving the wrong problem here. The reason tuition is increasing so rapidly in California is because the State no longer has the wherewithal to properly fund its educational institutions. This is a direct consequence of the fact that Cali…
Not so minor point: the California Three Strikes law requires the first two felonies to be "violent" or "serious". From the reference I just checked, the only non-violent serious crimes are "lewd or lascivious act on a child under the age of 14 years" and providing hard drugs to minors ("heroin, cocaine, phencyclidine(PCP), or any methamphetamine-related drug" or a precursor of the latter). I find it impossible to wo…
No one is arguing that it is bad public policy. I myself am only arguing that it is prudent to reconcile public policy solutions to the public's bank account prior to implementing them.
I live in Houston, yes I'm a Texan. No one is tougher on crime than Texas. In some cases, yes, Texas is too tough. One of the major reasons Texas did not follow along on the whole Three Strikes bandwagon was because the political leadership thought it might not be cost effective. Now I don't know if it is or it isn't, I would need more data to make that determination.
My point is, the leadership here in Texas, at least had the ability to analyze the likely fiscal consequences of such a policy and then decide whether or not to enact it. Balancing the fiscal consequences with the public safety benefits. In California, unless I am misunderstanding their ballot initiatives, the leadership has no choice but to enact the policy. Regardless of the policy's fiscal consequences.
I'm just not so sure that is a good way to do things.