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Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

latimes.com

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Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#341

Post by BearGoesChirp »

jopsen wrote: post #92
danblick wrote: post #24

Strangely, I was just reading about the costs of prison in California because I read an article about "the grave injustice of mandatory sentencing" [1] and was curious about the associated costs to taxpayers. I don't feel personally affected by this issue, but I get the sense we are sentencing too many people for too long for non-violent drug offenses. Anyway, the cost of the prison system in California is about $7.9…

The day you suddenly feel affected by the issue, you won't be commenting on HN anymore. And with the questionable state of the US justice system you don't even have to commit a crime. An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent. Also, the problem is too long sentences for pretty much all crimes.. Americans aren't very forgiving.

>An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent.

Source?

From what I remember, 4% is for death row, which has a much higher standard of guilt. Most people who are sentenced for a crime plea guilty to avoid worse charges, which is a situation where a rational innocent individual would plea, meaning that far far more are likely innocent.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#342

Post by dragonwriter »

theBobBob wrote: post #69
csmark wrote: post #60

The 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…

That really is simply disgusting. Keeping people imprisoned mainly so that they can be used as a source of cheap (borderline free) labour is pure exploitation. It really doesn't seem very many steps above slavery. I know that at least in theory people are in prison because they have done something wrong so that them working to in part pay for the cost of their incarceration seems justified but if they should be relea…

> It really doesn't seem very many steps above slavery.

It is exactly slavery, and it is the explicit exception to the US Constitutional abolition of slavery in the 13th Amendment.

It's also an explicit exception to the international prohibition on slavery in the ICCPR.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#343

Post by anigbrowl »

sbov wrote: post #308
throwaway040435 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get 3 years in jail, you get 3 years in prison. The only jail time you do waiting to be sentenced to prison is the time you wait to go to court. Do you think it's appropriate to call out someone for using "jail" instead of "prison", when the meaning is clear, and you made the same mistake just 5 minutes prior? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497654 and in your original post: https://news.ycombinator.…

It wasn't clear for all of us. It would be nice of the OP to change "jail" to "prison" if that's what they meant.

In the USA, sentences of less than 1 year are misdemeanors and can be served in a jail. Sentences of longer than 1 year are felonies and are served in prison. Jails are operated under authority of the county in which they are located, prisons under the authority of state or federal government. This is obviously a summary rather than an exhaustive definition.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#344

Post by HillaryBriss »

pessimizer wrote: post #104
Shivetya wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction : Union. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association is very powerful in state and local elections and through association with other providers who are also union pretty much have the state on the ropes. Contractors might be part of the problem but they only are as much as CCPOA allows for. As in, you play by their rules or you don't get to play. Same reason we spend so much on education and don…

Prisons are not expensive due to high salaries for prison guards, so I'm not sure why you think it's the union's fault.

Apparently, California's prison guard union (CCPOA) has a history of lobbying against measures that would reduce the prisoner population and/or reduce state spending on prisons:

1994: With the help of CCPOA’s $101,000 support, Californians passed Proposition 184, the nation’s toughest three-strikes law mandating 25-years-to-life sentences for most felony offenders with two previous serious convictions.

2000: The CCPOA contributes at least $75,000 to the opponents of Proposition 36, the 2000 initiative that replaced incarceration with substance abuse treatment for certain nonviolent offenders.

2004: The CCPOA spends over $1 million to defeat Prop 66, the initiative that would have limited the crimes that triggered a life sentence under the Three Strikes law.

2005: The CCPOA defeats Governor Schwarzenegger’s plan to “reduce the prison population by as much as 20,000, mainly through a program that diverted parole violators into rehabilitation efforts: drug programs, halfway houses and home detention.”

2008: The CCPOA contributes $2 million to Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial campaign. The CCPOA contributes $1 million against Prop 5, a measure to reduce prison overcrowding by providing treatment rather than prison sentences for nonviolent drug users.

Source: http://californiapolicycenter.org/the-role-of-the-prison-gua...

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#345

Post by anigbrowl »

pixl97 wrote: post #318
77pt77 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get no gain time for time spent in jail for your prison sentence, so its often called dead time or day-for-day or something. Excuse me?! So if I wait for 1 year in jail waiting to go to court and later I'm sentenced to 1 year in prison, I get to serve another year?!

No, that poster doesn't know what they are talking about. That said, sentencing is very discretionary so a judge will commonly balance out your total sentence with how much time you've already spent in jail.

You're being extremely rude. It's hard to make absolutely definitive statements on an incredibly complex and often perverse system like custodial sentencing without resorting to the opaque technical language of legal journals. That is rarely appropriate for a casual discussion forum like HN.

As the other poster actually has first-hand experience of being incarcerated, your dismissive tone in response to some loose phrasing comes off as both nasty and ridiculous.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#346

Post by lazerpants »

tdb7893 wrote: post #168
chrshawkes wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

European countries are often similarly diverse and don't have the same prison population. Also, when you are talking about numbers in percents of population the amount of executions to make a real difference in population would be staggering and border on genocide, which, outside of a few exceptions, isn't the case.

Actually, European countries are not nearly as diverse as the USA with the exception of the UK. The best analysis I can find on the subject is [1]. I disagree with the point I think chrshawkes is making but the diversity claim is valid.

1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_et...

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#347

Post by enknamel »

cubano wrote: post #122
csmark wrote: post #60

The 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…

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…

I think I need to one up your boorishness. I don't think you are likely to break the law again right? That sounds like an effective correctional system. Sure it sucked. But jail/prison should suck.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#348

Post by anigbrowl »

yjgyhj wrote: post #162
cubano wrote: post #122

Earlier 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…

That is indeed totally crazy. I wish I had some way to verify your story, as I as a reader can't know who sits behind the keyboard on the other side.

You can easily verify the existence of such conditions in the penal system without needing to know the specific facts of an individual person's situation.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#349

Post by throwawaymaroon »

enknamel wrote: post #347
cubano wrote: post #122

Earlier 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…

I think I need to one up your boorishness. I don't think you are likely to break the law again right? That sounds like an effective correctional system. Sure it sucked. But jail/prison should suck.

Fuck decorum if it means I can't say fuck you.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#350

Post by GuiA »

enknamel wrote: post #347
cubano wrote: post #122

Earlier 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…

I think I need to one up your boorishness. I don't think you are likely to break the law again right? That sounds like an effective correctional system. Sure it sucked. But jail/prison should suck.

Wow. Someone, whom you've never spoken to before, shares a personal story about their treatment in prison, and your reaction is "well you deserved it, treats you right". That's a fairly uncouth attitude to have towards one of your hacker peers.
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