Remember when "university" meant "for anyone"? Why should Harvard tuition fees cost anywhere near what it costs to incarcerate someone 24/7?
Didn't it mean "for all knowledge"? When universities appeared, they were clearly not for everyone.
Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
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Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
#172This is what privatization leads to. Hand off a government function to a profit-seeking organization, well, it's gonna seek profits; the taxpayer winds up paying for the thing and also for someone else to make their profits off the thing.
Seriously has there ever been a situation where privatizing an industry led to actually reduced costs, and didn't lead to reduced quality of output? Even if you accept the (IMHO dubious) premise that private industry is necessarily going to be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain has to be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for the taxpayer.
Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
#173Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
#174Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
To play devils advocate prison contracts have valid extra costs you have to vet contactors more than say an office cleaner. You also have to budget for extra security if your a contractor working in a prison you have to log all of your tools in and out to stop inmates nicking things that could be used as weapons or to aid an escape
I agree with who on the whole but I'm going to play....Angel's advocate? (What do you call the person playing devil's advocate to the Devil's advocate?) There is a (relatively famous) prison in Norway where the rehabilitation is so effective that the prisoner's are given these jobs and are handed chainsaws, picks, the keys to the boat off the island. The prisoners are the ones ferrying people to and from the prison.…
What level of security is the prison? There are low security facilities in the United States where prisoners leave to work for the day and have to be back at a certain time.
Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
#176The USA has ~5% of the world's population but 22% of the world's prisoners. Financial profiting from prisoners: Prison Labor - paid $0.93-0.16/hr California Prisons didn't want to release prisoners because they would loose cheap labor..Courts said they had to: https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court-it-cant-rel... 30% of California forest firefighters are prisoners .. The state argued against parole credit f…
Well we have laws and plenty of dangerous people who belong in these prisons. Another thing to consider is other countries will execute their prisoners over drug dealing where we put them in prison. There is also the fact that we are the third most populated country and a melting pot combined with plenty of terrible neighborhoods of all ethnicity's.
> Another thing to consider is other countries will execute their prisoners over drug dealing where we put them in prison.
You can almost always find someone doing something even more horrific. That's a pretty low bar, which is usually not seen as sufficient.
Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with who on the whole but I'm going to play....Angel's advocate? (What do you call the person playing devil's advocate to the Devil's advocate?) There is a (relatively famous) prison in Norway where the rehabilitation is so effective that the prisoner's are given these jobs and are handed chainsaws, picks, the keys to the boat off the island. The prisoners are the ones ferrying people to and from the prison.…
What level of security is the prison? There are low security facilities in the United States where prisoners leave to work for the day and have to be back at a certain time.
Do you have any link(s) on this?
Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
#178Think about that for a second...$75K/yr for abhorrent, yet improving conditions and you'll come to the correct conclusion that contractors are absolutely fleecing not only the p̶r̶i̶s̶o̶n̶s̶ tax payers, but the prisoners themselves. Half a lifetime ago, I had to spend a weekend in jail while visiting a friend in California (accused of theft by a drunk lady who couldn't find her credit cards and fingered me instead of…
Does the US court system not refund travel cost? Over here you can get full refund of travel cost if you are summoned to court(within reason - if you travel first class you will only get price of a normal ticket back).
No. When I got a jury summons in SF, the notice said they didn't give jurors free parking.
Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the risk of being boorish about the subject... I was recently released from Las Vegas County Jail (CCDC) where all sentenced inmates, myself included, are forced , by state law, to "work" in some manner in the jail. In this case, work consisted of 11-hour shifts, 6 days a week, of ultra back-breaking kitchen work. We were not even allowed to have water cups anywhere outside the break room. They actually yelled fas…
> If you refused to work, you were put in the box and 5 days were added to your sentence. Don't you need a judge to determine that?
Prisons have a certain amount of gaintime (small reductions in sentencing) that's there to be withheld at the prison's discretion, specifically in order to motivate work and good behavior.
Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the risk of being boorish about the subject... I was recently released from Las Vegas County Jail (CCDC) where all sentenced inmates, myself included, are forced , by state law, to "work" in some manner in the jail. In this case, work consisted of 11-hour shifts, 6 days a week, of ultra back-breaking kitchen work. We were not even allowed to have water cups anywhere outside the break room. They actually yelled fas…
> If you refused to work, you were put in the box and 5 days were added to your sentence. Don't you need a judge to determine that?
They aren't actually adding anything to your sentence, but are just taking away 'gain time' that has been earned for good behavior. You can accrue gain time and eventually earn early release. However, they can also take this away for bad behavior.
Obviously some sentences are not eligible to earn gain time.