At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard
latimes.com
latimes.com
Until fairly recently, prison wasn't really the way most punishments worked. They did hangings, beatings, shaming, banishment...
Imprisoning people long term is expensive, and kings probably couldn't have afforded anything like a modern scale prison system. The closest thing was more slavery than imprisonment, and economically self-sufficient or better. Anything from the indentured servant transports to the Americas to "hard labour" in a gravel mine or somesuch. Cannon fodder, sometimes.
The way we got to here was largely moral reasoning. Those punishments are cruel and inhumane. Early versions of modern prison systems were often created with the idea they'd rehabilitate (reform) people.
I think it's debatable, after generations of experience, that prisons make people more criminal. At the very least, rehabilitation doesn't work very well.
We're stuck with different ideas of what prisons are even for? Rehabilitation sounds societally useful, but the failures have been overwhelming. Justice? Deterrence?
Surely, with that sort of budget (not including courts/lawyers), we can do something more useful.
Prison startup?
They used to do it in the Soviet Union (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka).
Not exactly aeron chairs and ping pong tables, but way better than the regular prison camp.
California paid inmates fighting fires a dollar an hour.
It depends on your definition of immoral...
People in prison eat what they're given, sleep when they're told, have (almost) no personal property and are at mercy of the administration on many other issues.
Work is one of the greatest things a human being can do. Working doesn't make an otherwise free person a slave.
You mean, people who confuse forced work with slavery.
If I stop working, I'll get kicked out of my house and will probably die of hunger. Does it mean I am forced to work?
Back to your point though: isn't it ironical then that pretty much the only place where a person is not "forced" to work is prison? How's that ever fair?
Absolutely yes. You told it yourself, if you stop working you're going to die from hunger. In what sense can you argue "you're free not to work"?
It looks like you’re in the US. You’d have to try quite hard to die of malnutrition here.
This is such a bad argument in my opinion...living is working...it might not be at a job in an office, but if you want to eat/drink/shelter, you're going to have to work one way or the other...your question kinda seems like complaining about the fact that consuming calories and water and making shelter to live is not forced already, when it is by nature...
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Prison labor is literally slavery.
Calling labor as punishment "actual slavery" is incredibly dismissive of actual slaves.
You are dimly correct in that it is not identical to every other form of slavery practiced historically. But it's close enough for me--and I can only speculate as to your motives for splitting this hair.
All of these individually are features of historical systems uncontroversially identified as slavery. The particular form of penal slavery at issue may be unique in combining all of them, but I don't see any coherent argument why that would make it into not-slavery.
[0]https://www.cio.com/article/2417888/prison-labor--outsourcin...
From comments read on the Internet it seems there are plenty of differences between American and European prisons, even more to the Northen European countries.
There they seem to be able to rehabilitate the people (most of the time), unlike other places.
I think it doesn't help the depiction of prisons in fiction as a place where the strong thrive, full of contained violence, bribes and all the debauchery humanity is capable of.
I don't think American prisons rehabilitate. Insisting that they do even less is like the extreme capitalistic measures of cutting public funding for a function, and then demand that that function should be privatized because it doesn't work.
If I had to guess, I would say that prisons, in general, don’t rehabilitate. They just isolate for society’s protection because no one has a good idea of how to fix people that has effectiveness efficacy.
My comment above did not intend to convey that the US has great prisons or that other countries have great prisons. I meant that recidivism is bad and too many criminals come back into the prison system.
Can the US improve? Of course. Can the US learn from other countries? Of course. Is rehabilitating criminals a solved problem that the US is ignoring? No.
I think 20% is too high, even though it’s better than 30%.
Peter is imprisoned in the NT c.30 CE.
Perhaps you meant incarceration with a view to rehabilitation?
Egypt would be in a good situation for that given seasonality and nile flooding giving better yields.
Newer evidence strongly suggests the exodus took place during Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (c. 1450), dating Joseph’s deportation and rise to power at roughly 1900 BCE.
WHAT!
> Rehabilitation sounds societally useful, but the failures have been overwhelming. Justice? Deterrence?
WHAT! Mind sharing some sources?
IMHO you have it completely backwards.
I can point to plenty of European countries (Norway, Germany, Netherlands, etc.) that focus on rehabilitation, not punishment.
Their recidivism and overall crime-rates rates are significantly lower than in the US and their prisons don't look like 3rd world shitholes.
They blow the US out of the water on every metric. If anything has failed (and spectacularly so), it's the idea that focusing your prison system on punishment works.
I can't fathom what gave you a different idea.
It has not failed, because it is not, and has never been, in any meaningful sense, the goal of any of the American criminal justice systems.
Specifically, none of them have been in any substantive way been designed around any evidence of what does or does not work in terms of rehabilitation.
The US criminal justice systems focus on retribution and demonstration of moral outrage, not rehabilitation.
This is a blanket statement and not realistic. I've been through the system and knew a lot of guys who abhorred becoming institutional criminals.
Please cite sources to support your claim.
Not really true:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/
Totally comparable to the US, Norway being an exception (as usual).
> They blow the US out of the water on every metric.
The US is a very large and diverse country and it's not structurally comparable to Germany, Netherlands and much less Norway (with 22% of GDP being oil exports). That would be cherry-picking. To draw any conclusions on the effectiveness of incarceration would require more careful analysis.
> I can't fathom what gave you a different idea.
Crime statistics and crime aren't the same thing. The point of prison sentences is no just punishment, it's deterrence. If you rarely convict anybody, your prisoner's rate is low, but the criminals are out on the street knowing they have nothing to fear.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/16...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-traffickin...
https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/finance/gangsters-paradis...
Let's fact-check some of their numbers.
Spoiler Alert: Their cited sources have completely different numbers.
EDIT: I removed some examples that are probably correct according to their definition of recidivism (they only looked at prisoners -> offenders).
Table 2.
Germany 35% (them) vs 23% (source)
They may have linked the wrong source here, since the source they provided is specific to people with psychotic disorders.
So let's assume this is their source (the one they linked for Germany in Table 1): https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/DE/Legalbewaehr...
According to them the re-imprisonment rate is 35%, though the source says it's 23% (page 9, first paragraph).
The re-imprisonment rate for juvenile offenders is 35% though and mentioned in the same paragraph. It's likely they just confused that.
> Netherlands 48% (them) vs 27.6% (source): Fact Check Failed
They picked the number of "ex-prisoners" that become prisoners again (i.e. actual reconviction), you picked the number of "adult offenders" that become prisoners for the first time. You literally just picked the lowest number in the table without comprehending it. The correct number (48.5%) was right above.
> Germany 48% (them) vs 35% (source): Fact Check Failed
35% is the average including fines (recidivism: 29%) which make up for the vast majority of sentences. For adult prison sentences the recidivism rate is 45%/39% and for youth prison sentences it is 64%/62% (without/with parole).
Though I added something I previously excluded for Table 2, which I'm still unable to find in their sources.
About your reading of the sources though:
> They picked the number of "ex-prisoners" that become prisoners again (i.e. actual reconviction)
No that would be Table 2, not Table 1. Table 1 is about "ex-prisoners" that got convicted of any offense again, not necessarily a prison sentence.
> you picked the number of "adult offenders" that become prisoners for the first time.
That's not what Table 5.1 [1] is at all: "Reconvictions as a result of any crime, not disposed of through an acquittal, a dismissal by reason of unlikelihood of conviction, or any other technical decision."
> 35% is the average including fines (recidivism: 29%) which make up for the vast majority of sentences. For adult prison sentences the recidivism rate is 45%/39% and for youth prison sentences it is 64%/62% (without/with parole).
Yes. This is where I messed up. Though note that that recidivism rate (45%) is "ex-prisoner" -> any conviction (incl. fines). Which likely fits what they wanted to show in Table 1.
[1]: https://www.wodc.nl/binaries/factsheet-2011-5a-def-4apr2012-...
The source given indeed seems to be incorrect.
> No that would be Table 2, not Table 1. Table 1 is about "ex-prisoners" that got convicted of any offense again, not necessarily a prison sentence.
Fair enough but that was my mistaken wording, the table in the source still correctly differentiates between conviction and re-imprisonment.
In any event, I remain unconvinced that these rates are substantially better compared to the rates in the US, especially considering how difficult these numbers are to compare.
In my native Norway, rehabilitation has been the focus to such an extent that foreign media come to do stories on the 'holiday camps' prison time is served in.
It somehow works, though. Recidivism is very low. Here's a few examples on how inmates do their time
-Education is encouraged - whether it is to a learn a trade or getting a degree (presumably lectures are mostly followed via teleconference).
-Counselling is available to help you deal with whatever issues landed you in prison in the first place.
-As you near the end of your sentence, restrictions are gradually lifted to ease the transition back into society - lower-security units, daytime leave to report to work, halfway houses where inmates can live a normal-ish life in the daytime but need to observe a curfew in evenings/nights.
-After you get out, you have regular one on ones with the social services, helping you find a place to stay, work, family counselling if required etc.
-Companies are offered part of your pay refunded by the state for a limited time if they hire you.
All in all, I guess it can be argued that our pendulum has swung too far towards rehabilitation - but if the point of prison is to reduce the long-term risk and cost of crime, we're doing reasonably well.
Frontline did a report on people on parole. It’s a punishing system, even when you’re out of the systems you’re usually one drink away from being thrown back in
It’s a very good example of something where all the individual players are trying, but so much of how the system works makes results be harsh and cruel
-former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman
https://www-m.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-ri...
As user GatorD42 pointed out when this was brought up before:
>...Baum claims Ehrlichman said that to him in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999).
If the quote was said by Ehrlichman, it doesn't actually describe the drug polices of the Nixon administration. While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs", the actual substance of his policies seem to be different than what people think it was:
>...I have been fortunate over the years to discuss the distorted memory of Nixon's drug policies with almost all of his key advisors as well as with historians. Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).
http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/who-started-the...
High recidivism (shows it's at least a failure), focus on punishment (mandatory minimums, etc...) for things like drug possession, cruel bail system, "tough on crime" judges, legalized prison slavery, heavy use of solitary confinement, outright criminal levels of cruelty, normalized prison rape, stigmatization of felons, etc...
They had prisoners fight california wildfires for slave wages. They justified it as it was voluntary and they were learning a skill.
Felons can't become firefighters in california.
If I think "it's one of those people from the other side of the tracks" it won't feel like a person with whom I could have a close connection. I might not care as much.
Not saying it's a good thing, though.
I'd say you would care too much! (abstract/general 'you', not @CalRobert). The problem any sort of reform faces is antipathy, not apathy.
Or you could say that it's an appeal to numerous studies (psychological and sociological), most of human history, and prudence...
Often, you'll hear people say something like, "Norway did X and it works, so we should do X in the U.S." These are typically fairly naive claims. Regardless of the normative dimension of the claim (whether X is worth doing in the U.S. in the first place), there is a non-trivial amount of complexity that is swept under the rug. For instance, NYC has twice the population of Norway. The U.S. really is significantly more demographically diverse than Norway (or, if this claim isn't good, then we can just say they are equally diverse, but at the scale of the U.S. this diversity increases complexity a non-trivial amount). The U.S. has a more fragmented legal system. Etc. Etc. Etc.
If a Martian were asked which nation would be easier to implement new policies in, maintain those policies, and have them bring about the desired end, which do you think they'd choose? I wager they would immediately choose Norway.
We also have a much more diverse population than Norway, so if anything, US should be looking towards us for inspiration.
It's all white people.
Sorry to be so glib, but I don't think I've ever seen "homogenous" used by someone who wasn't engaged in at least borderline racist dog whistling. The entire idea of it is based on the notion that people cannot successfully mix together, and therefore should not try.
Instead of using race as the example, let's use language.
You have three people. Two have spoken English their entire lives. The third grew up speaking French and learned English later.
They need to do something really hard to get right, something easy to mess up. Mistakes come at a high cost.
When the two English speakers work together, things work. They go smoothly. They can manage to overcome challenges and meet goals.
When they try to work with the French speaker, you see a lot more problems. It's frustrating. He does things they didn't expect. It is easy to feel like he's intentionally screwing things up.
Homogeneous demographic groups have an easier time all being on the same page. They spend less time and effort trying to bridge differences in experience, attitude, etc.
You get ugly terms like Mansplaining and Whitesplaining because "privileged" people -- people for whom life has tended to work -- often feel that their life works because they were taught the right information and if people who are having a hard time just had the same info, their life would also work. And then the person getting the info gets mad because they feel like they are being treated like they are stupid and not trying rather than like their life actually works differently because they are different and the world treats them differently.
In my view, these are the real dynamos of the 'criminal world', where predatory traits are baked into their behavior patterns at a lower level. There are compelling opportunities for more research here (https://modlab.yale.edu/news/can-psychopaths-be-cured) and isolating variables is a good way to help move things forward.
People don't commit violent crimes for weed. The crime is having weed. And things that are not weed are not being legalized state-by-state.
So I'm saying that it in many cases, the problem isn't so much that prison is a failure as a rehabilitation center and we should focus on rehabilitation elsewhere, it's that people are in prison for things they simply don't want to be rehabilitated for and have strong influences to continue doing. The culture is inherently resistant to being rehabilitated from things that it doesn't consider harmful.
To use an example that might be more neutral, what if copyright enforcement was more severe and we had half a million people in prison for watching unlicensed YouTube videos? We might analyze the failure of the prison system in rehabilitating people from watching the wrong streams and focus more on education so that people could identify properly licened content before they watched it. But unless the people actually considered this behavior harmful, it would be an impossible task, and we would see ever increasing numbers of people in prison for watching the wrong videos.
But we also have very high recidivism rates for stuff like "armed robbery", independent of social-issue crimes like marijuana possession. And society generally has an Opinion about armed robbery. (It's bad!)
Go to prison for weed. Get out. Realize how fucked things are now that you're a felon on parole.
Anders Breivik got 21 years for killing 77 people. Are you worried about when he gets out in 2033?
Focusing on what (to you, as an outsider) seems to be outlandish is honoring the breach rather than the observance.
And unlike, say, the United States--there's only been one of him. This country has folks trying for high scores on a very regular basis. (Remember Las Vegas? That was 18 months ago. 59 deaths.)
Perhaps it is worth looking at trends and impacts rather than media splashes.
He'll also be under close supervision.
Norwegian law opens for in essence indefinite terms for inmates deemed a lasting danger to society.
ABB was sentenced under this statute and may well be locked up for the rest of his days; he may, however, at regular intervals apply to a board for release. He must then convince this board that he is no longer a threat to society and good luck with that.
This is very true. As an example, recidivism in Sweden is around 40%[0], compared to around 68%[1] in the states.
[0] - https://www.bra.se/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/...
One developed PTSD from it and has had major issues since he was released 15 years ago. The other one hasn't quite came back mentally either, will not talk about it and is so much worse off now than ever. After he was released, but before his court date where he knew he wasn't going to have to go back, he was contemplating suicide.
They all said they would rather die than ever go back for any significant time. I'm not sure what significant means in that respect, but dying seems to be the general theme they share now.
After working at a jail for a bit, I'm not sure I blame them at all. I like to think I'm mentally strong, but I don't know how long I could do it. I am sure I would have the same mentality they do now after spending time in jail / prison.
I spent 7 years in prison, most of it in a maximum security facility. I once spent 3 straight weeks on 23 hours cell confinement - no tv, no books, no other people aside from a guard walking by doing rounds. The other 1 hour was allowed in essentially just a larger cell.
I've known many other inmates - before, during, and after incarceration. No one was keen on going back, but I don't know anyone who developed any significant PTSD from their experiences, and no one who would choose literally death over re-incarceration.
I did know one guy who got PTSD after being shot 7 times by the police for trying to drive away from them. None from being in jail for a few months, though.
So which punishment is more humane? Turns out we are picking for the experience of "the innocent" not for the rights of the "guilty".
In these lines I have commented before: the main moral issue of modern prison systems is that they don't value liberty, so merely taking away someones liberty does not quench the thirst of revenge that pays off for the politician rhetoric.
I've heard over and over again, in the words of criminals themselves (on podcasts, in new stories), that they got into the career part of being a criminal while behind bars.
I've heard it a lot, too. But "a lot" means still less than 100 times. There are millions of prisoners.
Not saying it isn't the case, just saying I'd like to have more data.
https://outlookzen.com/2016/06/18/we-need-cruel-and-unusual-...
I thought the goal was to make the most money off of minorities?
Steal items worth 12 pence? Hanged. Lesser amount? Cut a hand off. If lucky, commuted and deported for indentured servitude in the colonies. Treason? Hanged, drawn and quartered.
As we remember from history classes, stealing, murder and other crime ceased to exist by the 17th century. Oh, hang on a minute. It was so ineffective that juries started nullifying and deliberately under-valuing property to avoid the incessant death penalties. It was just yet another means to oppress the lower orders. Unsurprisingly much of the 18th century consisted of successive legal reforms.
What works? Not prisons, not punishment, but rehabilitation. proven time and time and time again. Not very popular with the hang 'em and flog 'em types on the right though.
And the left. Tough on crime gets any politician elected.
Prisons & harsh punishment seems to work quite well in Singapore; they have one of the lowest crime rate in the world.
It makes a difference when comparing justice systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Legal_systems_...
It was laws falling into disrepute with both the profession and juries, and transportation becoming the majority that led to much of the 18th century legal reforms that removed nearly all the capital offences.
I absolutely believe that there is room for something innovative to be done here, but I don't think it has anything to do with incarceration.
I do think a UBI (basic income) would reduce crime enormously, if it were confiscated when they are in prison. It would be a powerful economic incentive.
Done properly, it could provide a strong incentive not to commit crimes. I have little faith that it would ever be done properly.
Remember most petty criminals make less than minimum wage.
Which direction is the causation? Do they steal because they are poor? Are they poor because they have bad behavior, such as stealing? Or is both stealing and low wage caused by a common factor, such as mental illness?
I agree until this point you made.
We know the "modern prison system" is a very loose term dictated by "where" much more than just an abstract idea. In places like the Netherlands they have so few prisoners they had to close down prisons.
There are certainly a group of people who cannot be easily re-introduced to society: People who commit premeditated murder, rapists, pedophiles, serial killers, mass-murderers, terrorists. But this accounts for a fairly small percent of the prison population.
Most prisoners can fall into a few categories: Stupid, No other means of decent survival, Drugs.
I'll tackle these in order of ease:
- Drugs - This has been shown to be the easiest to solve. Giving prisoners the option of avoiding their entire sentence in exchange for rehab and support group attendance has been INCREDIBLY effective.
- No other means of decent survival - A.k.a. poverty. This feeds the drug problem too. People need: Food, Shelter, Entertainment. Boredom is the cause of too many kids, drug use, and theft of goods. Giving these people a decent base education and job placement programs can be orders of magnitude more efficient.
- Stupid - This can cause the other problems too, but I include in here a lack of self control. Many times this can be solved with education, job placement, emotional control education, etc. There are ways to rehabilitate these people into society.
Instead of everything I said, we treat marijuana arrests in the USA worse than many cases of murder, rape, fraud. We need sane laws here.
Furthermore the real criminals that cause a ton of subsequent crime is financial fraudsters. We call it "white collar criminals" who get at best a slap on the wrists -- Steal 20 mil? Go to jail for a few years. Have a bag of weed? Go to jail for 10 years. These white collar criminals are the ones that need punishment the most. They cause so much subsequent crime, and they always believe they both deserve what they do and can get away with it. These are the ones we need to lock away for the longest of times.
And finally the privatization of prisons. So much on that. But basically, if you run a prison as a business, it is 100% not in your interest to prevent future crime, but rather to ensure the prisoners (your cash cows) never leave.
Even the best examples aren't great. From random study I just googled:
The 2-year re-arrest rates ranged from 26% (Singapore) to 60% (USA), two-year reconviction rates ranged from 20% (Norway) to 63% (Denmark), and two-year reimprisonment rates ranged from 14% (USA – Oregon) to 43% (Canada – Quebec, New Zealand)
https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/4-28/v1
That's recidivism over just 2 years, and I suppose some people commit crimes and don't get caught.
My point is that it seems we should be doing better. Maybe Norway is a model, maybe oregon. Anyone know what Oregon do different?
most people committing murder fall in the following categories:
- they premeditated and thought they were NOT going to be caught, so prison isn't a deterrent. They thought they were smarter than forensics.
- they were in a situation and had to kill someone due to circumstances of the other crime. Such as robbing a store, the clerk pulls a gun, now you gotta shoot them before you die. This was a massive lack of foresight and thus again punishment isn't a deterrent because they don't think things though.
- they were angry and it got out of hand. No foresight, they acted on pure emotion. This may be anger issues or other reasons. There is no deterrent here, only rehabilitation.
- political / hate-based killings. These people feel they are doing society a favor, they feel RIGHT to do this killing. Deterrent doesn't help if the political climate is empowering them and making their message amplified.
Now just imagine how much crime is in similar categories as above. The same logic applies.
So basically we need to focus entirely on prison time being a rehabilitation to: make the person understand and accept what they have done. make the person feel genuine remorse. make sure the person has alternatives in life to doing what caused the problem to begin with. Most places in the world focus more on "remove the undesireables" and "punishment is future deterrent". So really we're doing literally the opposite.
US's 60% re-arrest rate is very telling.
We don't need another CCA.
What's also funny about this is that it used to be that the colleges that cost the most money were the most prestigious. Now an inmate can claim that same level of prestige tongue in cheek.
Other places have rehabilitation, and it appears to work.
My ideal solution would be something like this: end the war on drugs, make community service a part of as many sentences as at all possible (and certainly all white collar crimes), then separate the component that are dangerous in such a way that they will have no contact with any other prisoner, so that they don't learn to be better criminals. These are the people which we will have to give up on.
Of course this proposal is politically impossible, as it pisses of all sides, but it should be possible to at least increase the number of community service sentences.
America is pretty close to the bottom of the pile when it comes to their justice and incarceration system, to the point that their allies are actually refusing extradition requests on account that "US prisons are unconscionable and medieval." [1]
The very idea of locking someone up for more than 10-15 years is crazy enough. Add in the bail system, plea bargains, elected judges, understaffed public defenders, civil forfeiture, private prisons, prison labor, disenfranchisement, onerous and obtuse probation conditions, pre-trial incarceration (this is the absolute worst), and you have a system that actively causes injustice at every turn, and ensures high recidivism by producing a population with nothing to lose, nothing to live for, and the sword of Damocles ever hanging over them.
[1] https://gizmodo.com/british-hacker-wont-be-extradited-to-the...
Citation please? For serial murderers or serial rapists - OK. Probably a screw loose. For drug abusers and the associated foibles that go with it (theft, prostitution, etc) - why would you suggest rehabilitation can't work?
That's ignoring the societal pressures of kids who have no means to sustain themselves beyond illegal activities - just assuming that they wouldn't act different if given the choice is... quite pessimistic.
They might not have imprisoned as many people as the US, especially for petty things.
> The closest thing was more slavery than imprisonment,
> Those punishments are cruel and inhumane
The US has legalized slavery for prisoners.
> At the very least, rehabilitation doesn't work very well.
Rehabilitation is not the focus.
> Prison startup?
Gross. America has too much money made off prisons already.
We could actually work towards reducing crime, but we as a society want punishment too much to allow it.
He just finished a 2 year stint for violating probation. When you get caught drunk driving with a gun in the car, then tend to send you back behind bars. In reality, he had two other offenses in the time before that, which should have been enough.
His first sentence was 7 years for theft. He was part of a group of ~ 20 year olds that were breaking into garages and stealing tools, etc to sell for money.
He got in trouble as a teen and went to one of those youth harbor camps, that didnt' seem to help him. When he was released from prison the first time, he got a decent paying job at the local auto plant (we're a blue collar town) and he threw that all away. He would rather do whatever the heck he wants which usually means hanging out at the bars and drinking and selling a little bit of drugs and getting into fights.
The system can't fix him until he wants to be fixed. If he's out here he's just breaking laws and fathering more children (that the state gets to support as well). I'm perfectly okay with him being locked up until he decides he's had enough and wants to straighten out.
I just hope if he ever decides that, he's not doing 10-20 years at that time. Once you're in, you're in.
When are the Americans going to realise you can't punitively punish someone and not reap of profound negative consequences (re-offending, home-breaking etc.).
I knew someone who was in an orphanage (not the same as psychiatric, but similar problems existed there I just don't have anecdotes to share) in the 1920s. They would beat him with a chimney brush if he slept on his pillow. They got awards for how nice their beds looked (since the pillows were unused they always looked new). They used a chimney brush because the metal bristles would hurt without leaving large marks on the body.
While you could argue (and I would agree) that we can do better today I'm not convinced we actually would in practice.
The fact is, I used to see mentally ill patients all the time and have no where to send them. Often, they would turn to crime just to survive or get off the streets.
While I agree there were abuses in the past, wholesale destruction of the old system is a very American response without any real thought to its replacement.
But this is the same America that regularly jokes about men getting raped in prison, and gleefully discuss how convicted pedophiles will likely die if they end up in general population
Yes, in many cases because of their exposure to our prison system.
Some crime could be. Theft, burglary. But Assualt? Motor vehicle theft? DUI? Murder? Weapons violations? Vandalism? Child abuse?
Think about it in the context of having much different risk/reward calculations for all activities, much higher stress levels, much worse access to health care, much higher levels of self-medication, higher sense of futility and unfairness in the world, possibly cognitive/emotional impairments due to unaddressed physical health issues, etc.
Unless you've been poor yourself, especially poor in a rich country, or unless you've worked directly with poor people and learned from them what it is like to live their lives, assume that it's far more difficult to simply /exist/ than you can imagine.
https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2013/03/12/man_who_attack...
Canada is very light on it's criminals. Child Molesters, Rapists and even murderers tend to spend little time behind bars with little consequence for their actions.
Here is another article about how broken Canadian Law is.
https://www.straight.com/blogra/canadian-justice-system-so-b...
Just recently a young boy was beaten to death by a repeat offender in Winnipeg. The animal broke into the boys home and beat him to death while the child tried to protect his Grandmother. The media won't even tell you the animals name or anything about him. I will be surprised if he gets any jail time.
I wouldn't be proud of Canada's punishment of criminals.
He beat the living tar out of living creatures instead of dealing with them humanely - yeah, that should be punished.
> The media won't even tell you the animals name or anything about him.
Why would you need his name? Has he even been found guilty yet?
Also, in this case there was the options to use traps or other methods to shoo them away - beating with a shovel doesn't seem humane, it just seems like it would have been convenient.
The guy also probably has substantially less money to lobby congress and the FDA for special privilege than the slaughterhouse industry.
https://globalnews.ca/news/5018332/police-on-scene-of-seriou...
> When police arrived minutes later, they found a man, 29, attacking 17-year-old Jaime Adao with a weapon. In order to stop the attack, police had to shoot the man.
Proven guilty in a court of law. Until then he's presumed innocent.
Perhaps but in most states, since this would be a state crime, he'd only spend a small fraction of that time actually in prison.
Your comment: I really don't like my cousin
The problem is that prison does an awful job of causing people to figure out that they've had enough and preparing them for walking the straight and narrow. Instead, it indoctrinates them in a culture which is harmful to that reform. The results prove that fighting that peer pressure, while literally locked in it for 2 years, is really hard. And that produces a vicious feedback loop where, after you're out, people think should be back in and segregate you socially, educationally, and financially.
Comparing college with prison is patently ridiculeous. Why would someone expect that keeping someone incarcerated be cheap?
The point is that they are different possible futures for a given individual. The matter of which of these two possibilities comes to fruition depends on policy and on that individual's conduct. To the degree that it's determined by policy, it makes sense to restrict incarceration such that it is used at most in the limited situations in which there is societal benefit.
Drug prohibition, for example, does not achieve this, but as a policy is responsible for a huge portion of the costs of incarceration.
Universities: 18 year olds moving out of home for the first time.
Prison Population: Many from unfortunate circumstances and have been fending for themselves long before 18.
1) that a society that mostly believes that a system of private businesses competing in a free market is the be all and end all of optimal resource allocation end up having the most expensive health care, higher education and apparently, prison system in the world; that this fact does not trigger more thought and discussion;
2) that despite incarcerating people being more expensive than sending them to Harvard, you still favor punishment over prevention and rehabilitation, having the highest incarceration ratio in the world.
You've created a compelling argument against government intervention, actually.
2. I agree with the second point. The US government officially does, too. Prison should be about rehabilitation and not retribution. It's just that the government doesn't act like it agrees.
Whenever I bring up this point I see downvotes. What I would love instead is a counter example of a country whose largest economic sectors do not capture the government and then have a huge hand in dictating policy in those sectors.
Our government intervention in the education market with student loans is just an awful system that encourages prices to continue to rise.
Uhh, Roche? (which also owns Genentech)
Novartis?
You can lead the world in pharma and have it captured by special interests. Infact I would say its almost inevitable.
Now that's not to say that your point about it being bad isn't legitimate.
Rank Company 2016 USD billions
1 Johnson & Johnson NYSE: JNJ 71.89
2 Roche SIX: ROG 50.11
3 Pfizer NYSE: PFE 52.82
4 Novartis NYSE: NVS 48.52
Number 2 and Number 4 are swiss companies.
(E.g. changing the equality laws for men and women, rapidly industrializing an agrarian Russia, leading China to top global economy from a century plus slump, letting Cuba have a top notch and cost effective hospital system, and so on)
The NHS is a good example too, but it requires one to look under the hood and see how many functions have been outsourced to private companies over the last ~20 years.
Specifically:
- Cuba's hospitals are not top notch, to say the least.
- Russia did the rapid industrializing but it already was on this way before the revolution and would be much better off should the socialist revolution never occurred.
- The equality laws for men and women are not due to socialism.
- China enjoyed the economic rise because they freed the marked not because they tied it, it's the opposite of socialism.
Cuba's doctors are excellent. And their healthcare is a marvel compared to their Latin American "free market" equivalents. And let's not even compare cost/benefit ratio to the US one (I obviously don't care if a millionaire can get better high end machines in a US hospital -- for the price of a Central Park overlooking condo or two). They key healthcare indicators are telling:
https://www.georgetownjournalofinternationalaffairs.org/onli...
>- Russia did the rapid industrializing but it already was on this way before the revolution and would be much better off should the socialist revolution never occurred.
If the "socialist revolution never occurred" the push to industrialization would be many times slower, and in all probability Russia would have been defeated and thus a German territory after WWII -- along with all of Eastern Europe if not more. So there's that.
>- The equality laws for men and women are not due to socialism.
"Beginning in October 1918, the Soviet Union liberalized divorce and abortion laws, decriminalized homosexuality, permitted cohabitation, and ushered in a host of reforms that theoretically made women more equal to men." -- Stalin took some of those back, but it took a lot of time for the US to even reach that level (assuming they even have).
>- China enjoyed the economic rise because they freed the marked not because they tied it, it's the opposite of socialism.
China remains a single-party state, with mass government intervention in the economy, and centrally planned activities. Besides, combining an open market with a socialist state is as old as Lenin's NEP.
If there is a real free market where consumers have a real choice, it can be argued that the system works, even if it's a race to the bottom. Even you indirectly admitted that most markets aren't free.
There are numerous cases where "socialism" (as laissez-faire Americans like to define it) achieves its goals better and cheaper, like healthcare and pretty much all natural monopolies such as infrastructure. Need any hard evidence with A/B tests? Look at the results of the privatization of European national railways.
I don't know enough about (Western) European railways but I have data about American and Russian railways. Russian railways are controlled by a single government entity and they are a corrupted disaster. Americans tried to nationalize their railways in 1800s and all it led to was higher costs and worse quality.
My observation is that everywhere where markets are let free people get better results. It's true that most markets aren't free but it's not because of the markets themselves but rather because of the government staying on the way.
I've also been meaning to read more on how the pharmaceutic industry works in the states, if the high prices on drugs are fair or not. Because even though prices may be high, it doesn't necessarily follow that the companies setting those prices are gouging people/being greedy, as many people claim.
The rate they pay is fixed by the state but all the assets — the insurance companies, the hospitals, the insurance policies — are in private hands.
In Germany none of that stuff is state owned, either.
This is one of the strangest things about the healthcare debate in the United States: we frequently contrast our system with “public” systems that are actually well regulated private systems.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesetzliche_Krankenversicherun...
and is 100% state-controlled.
That’s not the same thing as being state owned. Everyone has to be in one but there isn’t only one. Some are connected to regions and some to major industrial consortiums, like Audi.
It’s a small distinction, perhaps — but falsity proves anything. If it’s not state owned, it’s not, and we might as well not obscure debate about the US healthcare system with untruth.
Why doesn't lack of free market trigger a demand for reform of the sectors but only hand-waving excuses/acceptance?
When credit card companies in Europe started to price gouge with high fees the EU responded by putting a cap on fees. Why does the US government not respond by putting a cap on prices for hospital treatments?
In Denmark when the doctor sends you to the drug store with a prescription for e.g. pain medication, the drug store is required by law to tell you about cheaper alternatives (with the same active ingredient) even if they do not stock the cheap alternative. We simply do not accept being locked into a corner by medical companies. https://min.medicin.dk/Generelt/Nyheder/50
It's not like our prison costs more because our cultural values require us to treat the prisoners substantially better than countries Canada.
Because of lobbying
> Why does the US government not respond by putting a cap on prices for hospital treatments?
Because that's _socialism_, and it means the Communists have won
Because prices aren't arbitrary numbers slapped on to products and services that can be managed by diktat. It's like trying to control the temperature by limiting how high thermostats can go.
All 50 US states have generic substitution laws, and 89% of all prescriptions are of generics.
Definitely, the American system is a dumpster fire.
Denmark's isn't terrific, either, though. I remember having to call in a favor of my girlfriend's uncle (a doctor) to get a simple doctor appointment that wasn't 4 months out.
Certainly the government does have the people more in mind when making laws - that's not the case in the US. Our government cannot be trusted to have our interests at heart, unfortunately. Pushing for more regulation usually means helping the businesses and not the citizens.
Private health care is cheap and great throughout Europe. You can get an appointment quickly, have doctors that spend time with you, and spend a lot less than you would in the US. The private doctors here in Europe also tend to be better at their job - they've self selected.
The best medical care I've experienced, though, was in south east asia. Most of those countries have a pretty free market. You can even see ads in Bangkok for the price of a baby delivery - front and center on billboards even! Truly a capitalistic health care system.
I've described my own experience with SEA care here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15904413
The point is that health care is broken around the world but certain places need different solutions to make it less broken.
America already spends enough public money to afford public health care for everyone but we don't end up with any quality of care for that money.
America is unable to follow Europe on this one even though most european systems would be better.
There is demand for reform but there's almost an equal demand for status quo.
Cutting financial fees is one thing. Healthcare is a capital AND labor intensive industry. Cutting fees carelessly could cause massive layoffs, disrupted services and a lot of trickle down effects. The system has evolved to this point and while it's certainly due for disruption, it's not as simple as capping prices.
big difference
I don't think anyone is really saying that except for the most extreme neoliberals.
A, the "no true Scotsman".
The main thing (except insistence on dogma) free market adherents have with leftists (and their similar: "Stalinism/Maoism/Pol-Potism/Tsaucescuism/Titoism/DDR-ism/etc wasn't real socialism" defense).
"there is no free market but they are oligopols"
There used to be 12 private prison companies in 2000 but it appears there are only 3 now.
The start of the journey was privatization of prisons. This is where that path has currently led. It is what it is, ergo free market didn't work?
But we choose a free market or whatever because we believe it will produce the best outcome. If it doesn't work as envisioned then we can either tweak it until it does work, or throw it out and start again, the worst option is to leave it alone, especially as we know it works elsewhere.
There seems to be a view that free market v socialism is a binary choice. Its a continuum, and both pure socialism and pure free market are equally bad. No country follows either path 100%.
This is also why insulin is expensive (the discoverers and patent holders made their patents freely available long ago). It's regulations which keep insulin, and other drugs, protected from competition and therefore can be expensive... Really, there are endless stories about this.
The gov vs private debate is kind of academic when the reality is a lot of the problem comes down to collusion and cheating from both of them.
Usually competition is the way to insure fair prices.
The collusion then might be to not allow competition. In the case of pharmacy, for example, I would guess there are many regulations that make it very expensive or infeasible to start a competing firm.
There are, in my opinion, certain aspects of government, which never should be outsourced for private gain. A prison company being one of the most extreme examples.
If other companies can satisfy the needs of the state, why not prisons? You wouldn't mandate that governments should build their own cars, for example?
In my opinion (and we can certainly debate this point) this should never be outsourced to third party entities. A rent-a-cop in a mall should not have the power to arrest customers (or even search their belongings) without calling the cops.
Outsourcing such functions have the inherent risk that the privat company cuts costs and corners and moreover hires unqualified and cheap staff, which makes a bad situation even worse.
Incarceration of a human being should never, ever be a license to aply additional torture in any way, shape or form. Private law enforcment with minimal oversight is a direct route to such excesses, which should not be tolerated by a civilized society.
You wouldn't mandate that governments should build their own cars, for example?
That's a rather silly analogy, don't you think? Consumer products usually don't violently intrude into the freedom and bodily integrity of other people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
edit : added link
This is a strange assumption. As a free market proponent and almost a libertarian, I don't base my argument on "optimal resource allocation", neither care that much for it; I assume that most economically right-wing people don't pursue this as a main goal either, and rather see it as a nice side effect.
When it comes to privatizing stuff that really should be handled by a welfare state the “optimal resource allocation” argument comes up frequently though.
And it completely misses the point of supporting a welfare state.
It’s of course not about being optimal with resources, it’s about providing the best standard of life to as many individuals as possible.
Do this and the number of incarcerated will most likely drop.
It’s all a big game of balance, the way I see things.
Which is also a nice thing to have but definitely not the main objective for people on "my" political side. Main argument for privatising stuff is not being optimal or not: it's the principle of making the government, which is the only entity with monopoly on violence, as weak and as small as possible.
Think about it as a microkernel (I must admit that I don't know enough about kernel development, so this analogy is very crude). Even if moving different services from the kernel to user-space would hurt perfomance, it's still a good security practice: this lost efficiency is worth, even if the advantages are "abstract" and not clear from the get-go.
That would seem to address small govt concerns whilst avoiding the problems of the free market.
Violence is a consequence of many factors, and in a decent democracy having it monopolized with the governement we have elected is probably a good thing.
The great thing is that we have history as a reference and I think we should use it.
I’m not aiming for the extremes here, but rather life and living standard in the world and perhaps west specifically, post WW2.
The numbers are there, we can see the trajectories.
The numbers seem to say, pretty clearly — having a great standard of life seems to gain everyone (except for perhaps the ultra wealthy).
Think about this, and give me you view:
Why is the worlds most happy nations also the ones taxed the highest, and as such have the biggest government influences?
I'll pick different entities competing with one another over a monolith.
> Violence is a consequence of many factors, and in a decent democracy having it monopolized with the governement we have elected is probably a good thing.
Never said it wasn't. But the entity that monopolizes it should be as small as possible.
> Why is the worlds most happy nations also the ones taxed the highest, and as such have the biggest government influences?
Same reason you would probably find the biggest tumors in people with the healthiest lifestyles: they would kill others at much earlier stages.
From what I have experienced so far through life it looks like this supposedly healthy competition leads to variants of VW & co behaviour down the line.
I see very few exceptions from my northern europe socialist bubble.
When it comes to:
- School - Health - Police - fire & rescue services - etc, whatever you would consider part of welfare
I want the best, not a choice.
”Sir, you’re having a heart attack. Would you like the best treatment, or can we offer you this more competetive offering at a discount?”.
It’s just, to me, a really odd way of viewing a society.
The more we’ve privatized and NPM’ed all the things, the more it costs, and quality on the whole have suffered.
It’s great for politicians that can push blame I guess...
Also, a well thought out democracy is what gives options through voting. If all options are sub-par or too expensive, what’s the point?
We should send all criminals to Harvard. We’ll save money, and they’ll become productive members of society.
After the fact, it’s a bit late.
Perhaps there are mechanics in place that goes a bit deeper?
Are humans born stictly social or anti-social, and will anything accentuate these effects in the life of an individual?
Research is quite clear on this matter I believe, but of course there will always be exceptions.
The question is which cycle to you, as a society, want to feed? That is the one that will grow. Reference to the "Nordic" experience shows what a long-term shift in focus looks like.
They don't send "criminals to Harvard", but they have prisons close (if not more) habitable as a Harvard dorm, very humane treatment of prisoners, extensive educational programs, and so on.
And they have less costs, less crime, and a healthier society doing so.
So snark from a country with the largest prison population (by percentage) in the world, huge associated costs, rampant crime rates, and is so backwards as to still have the death penalty (in the 21st century!), is unwarranted.
It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem we’ve got. We could just not prosecute many non-violent crimes, like our District Attorney chose to do in San Francisco. But that didn’t pan out well and we now have the highest non-violent crime rate of any major US city.
Nature or nurture? If nurture, then it's at least highly plausible that their prison systems have something to do with it. Recidivism is also much lower.
(I'm sure there's a joke about Harvard educated bankers in there somewhere.)
In regards to health care, US public spending on health care is similar to that of other western countries, although it does spend more on private. Make of that what you will but saying that the US doesn't spend on public healthcare is just incorrect.
> While the U.S. has similar public spending, its private sector spending is triple that of comparable countries [0]
Same is true about public eduction
> In 2014, the United States spent $12,300 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 29 percent higher than the OECD average of $9,600. At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $29,700 per FTE student, which was 81 percent higher than the OECD average of $16,400. [1]
Private prisons house a small portion of California inmates:
> The California State Prison System is administered by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Division of Adult Institutions, which had 136,000 inmates as of 2014. The state of California also relies on private and leased prisons. The number of California prisoners in private out of state facilities is around 8,763 and 4,170 are housed in leased facilities within the state. [2]
[0] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart/u-s-similar-public...
So you're for decreasing the amount of public spending on health care in the US?
As an example, the price of Clopidogrel (Plavix), developped in France is sold 5x more expensive in the US than in France. Do patients in the US experience better outcomes by paying more? No, it's the same drug.
"Providing more" for healthcare, means better overall health, fewer avoidable deaths and longer life expectancy.
So anything sold oversees is pure profit (minus marketing / lobbying).
It is NOT supported, at least not by the citizens of the United States.
It is supported by the corporations, lobbyists, and outright purchased politicians of the United States.
The simple answer to most of these questions about "why doesn't the United States..." is because we no longer have a functioning democracy.
See Citizens United, electoral college, gerrymandering, 2 Senators for states with populations smaller than an average city, social media engineering by foreign actors, Mitch McConnell blatantly ignoring the Constitution with no repercussions...
U.S. 655 Switzerland 81 Japan 41
I'm thinking that a defining quality of Americans is their propension to spending. Saving money is just not something they seem to think about- it's not what you save that is important, but the total amount of money circulating in the economy. There are little incentives to make things less expensive, there are more incentives to consume as much as possible, both for privates and for businesses. It's wasteful, but contributes to make the economy stronger (even if the resulting society is more unequal and harder for those who earn less).
You have to think the scale though. US is not the same as e.g Sweden and can't be the same. The amount of benefits you get in Scandi countries or Europe in general against the US are massive. At the same time you have to think that the US is a country of 330m people compared to an average EU country of 10-20m people.
In the UK whilst there is free healthcare etc and its a country of 66m, the healthcare has been getting worse and worse. The appointment queues go up to years for a simple thing in London. (I had a meniscus tear and they appointed me to see an orthopaedic in a year after I was diagnosed. Just to see him. While its understandable that emergency issues are getting bumped up the ladder, mine which was a non-emergency felt like a bummer when I heard the orthopaedic wont see me for a whole year just to see at which stage I am at. That includes doing some scans to see my stage which the GP won't know unless he is some kind of magician. Yes again he can check if the leg is hammered around the knee to bump up how of an emergency it is.)
Generally speaking I think the main issue is that the US is such a large country that can't work the same as EU countries. That goes for everything, from benefits, to working schedules to prison systems etc.
Agreed. In addition to that, private health insurance is extremely cheap in London compared to the USA, and you can see a GP or specialist the same day if you have this.
That doesn't mean it's not extremely unfair to those that can't afford private health insurance, as treatment should be needs based, not finance based, but it's also difficult to campaign against when you're a beneficiary of a broken system.
This is largely a consequence of chronic underfunding, a deliberate political choice by the Conservative party.
It's also worth noting that despite the tremendous waste, at the very high end the US has no equal in healthcare or universities. That might not matter to the average customer though.
These things are generally not considered to be operating in a free market. All are highly regulated and receive massive government funding or subsidies.
"food", "housing", "healthcare" and "security".
It's like saying a refrigerator is more expensive than a microwave. It doesn't mean anything because they do different things.
The Supreme Court recently overturned this, but for a long time unions just extracted monopoly rents from all employees whether they liked it or not.
Just like the corporations that abuse their monopoly powers.
They optimize for benefits to their members, just as corporations optimize for benefits for their shareholders.
And just as businesses who get to big can abuse their monopoly status, big unions can also have negative consequences.
This is free market at work.
Edit: Which is why free markets need sensible regulations, to keep abuses from happening
The Correctional Peace Officers Association literally advocates for terrible public policy because it is in the financial interest of their members.
There is no goodness to celebrate here. This is an evil organization and in a just world it will come to a swift, peaceful, and complete end.
But it's ok for every single for-profit private company to do the same thing in the interest of its shareholders? Even when the company's aims are to the detriment of society as a whole?
...wait, did I say that?
They get paid shit even with the union.
Did I say any of those things?
No no, I think that there need to be dramatically fewer prisons, and dramatically fewer prison guards, and the union advocates exactly the opposite of that. That's not OK.
Getting the money upfront and investing it could be substantial, but thats still a much better negotiation than most Americans get for their jobs which are usually at most 40k without full pensions or almost any other benefit.
My grandmother is 86 and is infinitely grateful for her 25 years worked at a public university as a secretary. Those kinds of "obligations" are not large up front numbers but some people like the guaranteed security, at least up until austerity starts taking away the pay they were promised half a century ago.
Another fact supporting this is that the racial distribution in US prisons is uncorrelated with that of the general population. Specifically, 37% of inmates are African American, suggesting they may be incarcerated for lesser cause than those of other backgrounds.
One example of this is stop and frisk policies, which are applied unequally to people of different racial makeup, directly contributing to the racial disparity in the prison population assuming equal distribution of contraband.
> the racial distribution in US prisons is uncorrelated with that of the general population. Specifically, 37% of inmates are African American, suggesting they may be incarcerated for lesser cause than those of other backgrounds
This statistic could suggest lots of things, I'm not sure why being incarcerated for lesser cause would be the number one. Incarceration is strongly correlated with crime, which itself is strongly correlated with other factors that are also correlated with being African American, e.g. wealth, location
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the-b...
In all likelihood, higher arrests for marijuana of blacks are more due to the above factors than racism, though I’m sure that’s a non-zero factor as well.
The publication "Homicide Trends in the United States" by the US Department of Justice has crime data broken down by race, for example. See pages 11 and 12: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf
The data shows that people of different races commit serious crimes such as murder at considerably different rates.
The FBI also publishes crime statistics aggregated by race: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
Wow, why is that so high?
An attempt at a nuanced explanation (which undoubtedly misses a ton of factors):
Huge disparities in overall wealth and income, coupled with geographic segregation and isolation of a lot of the black population in areas of concentrated poverty, and the associated lack of access to social goods, such as public safety and good schools. The combined effects of poverty/segregation/isolation are specifically reflected in the fact that 78% of homicides involve people who know each other [1]. People who know each other killing each other is a result of the breakdown of community structures that would disincentivize that behavior. There have to be powerful incentives for someone to kill someone that they know, considering that the potential consequences are so severe (incarceration, violent retribution, etc). Often the perpetrators have very little (in wealth, community, etc) to lose, which also increases the incentive.
Another group that are similarly economically poor, Latinos, but due to a different history, have more intact community structures, don't have as high a rate of violent crime.
[1] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf (Table 8)
A good place to start is the Fair Sentencing Act which tried to address the problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act (but, this just address the mandatory minimum triggers, not the fact that African Americans are disproportionately jailed)
Edit:
Citation
https://eji.org/news/sentencing-commission-finds-black-men-r...
http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_...
If that's the case, its cultural and can be influenced.
- shorter incarceration period: incarceration is useful just for frustrated masses, not for the society
- rehabilitation: if incarceration period is useful to something, that is giving people time and space to restart their lives
2014, NOTE - Before the Great Migration
"With prisoner numbers falling and jails closing, Swedish criminal justice works, says director-general Nils Öberg" https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/26/prison-swede...
2018, A few years AFTER the Great Migration
"Sweden's rapidly filling prisons – capacity has jumped from 85 percent to 95 percent in just four years – is a problem officials had predicted." https://www.thelocal.se/20180712/violence-on-the-rise-in-swe...
"Sweden rape: Most convicted attackers foreign-born, says TV" ... " he SVT programme revealed that in cases where the victim did not know the attacker, the proportion of foreign-born offenders was more than 80%. " https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45269764
you get the picture...
I hope this is not too sensitive to post here on HN, as I know these facts goes against many of the beliefs many of you hold. But why be afraid of facts? They may tell you something you didn't knew before.
The truth is out there.
So yes, people change. And fuck your mindset
> Since 2000, the number of people in private prisons has increased 47%, compared to an overall rise in the prison population of 9%.
2016 things changed a bit:
> At the federal level, a 2016 Obama Administration policy shift to reduce reliance and ultimately phase out private prison contracts was reversed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in February 2017.
The article also answers whether this has any impact on the justice system:
> Changes in policy at the Department of Justice in 2017 that are likely to increase sentence length and expand prosecutions for drug and immigration offenses may contribute to the expansion of private facility contracting.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the-b...
It would be interesting to see the figures for other types of arrest.
The numbers are so out of whack that it points to some serious systematic issues, even in a country generally assumed to be quite attentive to their indigenous population.
There are also more men than women in the prison system. Doesn't mean the system is being sexist.
https://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/features/Pages/starr_g...
https://reason.com/archives/2017/06/09/prison-unions-punish-...
[..]California is unusual from a national perspective, per the report. Thirteen states have reduced prison populations since 2010, but they've also cut their prison spending by $1.6 billion. Seven states have increased their populations, but have managed to decrease their prison spending, (by $254 million). Fifteen states have increased their prison populations and also increased their total prison spending by a half-billion dollars. California is in an ignominious group of 10 states that saw declines in the prison population since 2010, but which increased spending by $1.1 billion. Furthermore, California's spending increase accounts for more than half of that number. California has by far the costliest system of incarceration in the nation at more than $75,000 per inmate per year—more than triple the average cost of the 18 states with the least-costly rates.[..] [..]The study focuses on the 2010 to 2015 period, and some major prison-related laws—e.g., 2014's Proposition 47, which reduced many felonies to misdemeanors and resulted in further reductions of prison populations—got started toward the end of the study period. Yet, if anything, these disturbing spending trends only accelerated in the ensuing years. "Gov. Jerry Brown's spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1 includes a record $11.4 billion for the corrections department while also predicting that there will be 11,500 fewer inmates in four years because voters in November approved earlier releases for many inmates," wrote Don Thompson for The Associated Press. "Since 2015, California's per-inmate costs have surged nearly $10,000, or about 13 percent." That's a whopping increase in a short period of time, and even more amazing given that state just raised gas taxes because it claims to be out of cash.[..]
That being said, I am sure they would regain enough money to seriously help that person, which is more likely what they need than to be locked in a cage to get some kind if societal retribution.
So depending on what the contract is for a private prison, it could actually be a case of it costs x for a prisoner.
Neither would Harvard, so at least the comparison still stands.
That depends on the person. How do you help a person who is primarily motivated due to narcissism?
given the structure of the costs https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost there is not much amortization going on, at least not at the scale "over many thousands", more like "over tens and hundreds".
It's a great business because your primary customers are clueless politicians trying to look tough on crime paying whatever they are being told to pay.
Prisoners are also laborers, slave laborers that is because they don't actually earn a lot. Somebody profits from that as well. The reason so many people are in prisons in the US is that it is good business for a lot of people.
So, to spell this out, US prisons are funneling tax money straight to institutional investors. Cost has nothing to do with it. Meanwhile they are cutting corners left right and center on cost and exploiting the prison population via lucrative corporate contracts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison_pipeline
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/20/prison-labor...
>More than 800,000 prisoners are daily put to work, in some states compulsorily, in roles such as cleaning, cooking and lawn mowing.
>The remuneration can be as woeful in states such as Louisiana as 4 cents an hour.
>The idea that such lowly-paid work in a $2bn industry is equivalent to slavery is leant weight by the 13th amendment of the US constitution. It banned slavery and involuntary servitude, with one vital exception: “as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”.
>Prisoners, in other words, have no constitutional rights and can be blatantly exploited.
https://www.laweekly.com/news/the-5-highest-paid-california-...
And if we keep the relation to Harvard, I'm quite sure there are more than 5 staff at harvard making over 500k/year.
"Due to lack of space, more than 1,000 inmates in Norway are waiting to be placed in prisons, where they are often assigned to individual cells. To solve the problem, Norway has leased Norgerhaven prison from the Netherlands." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/01/norwegian-inma...
The California problems really are: 1. Volume - too many people doing time for non-violent crimes 2. Healthcare costs for prisoners and employees (also seems like a root cause of every major problem in the US) 3. General inefficiency / Unions etc.
Honestly I think the rational approach for the US would be to forget every single issue and focus entirely the healthcare costs. Nuke the problem with either complete government control of the prices in the system or liberalizing supply side thru abolishing of licensing requirements / AMA / FDA / CLIA / etc.
I don’t think many people would be happy about a murderer walking free and paying him even if it ensured he wouldn’t reoffend.
AshishBora's point was that crime rate overall would increase, as there's a clear financial incentive to start committing crime.
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
If you pay people to commit crime, you get more crime. That’s irrespective of any bizarre immunity you personally think you have to the incentives.
Imagine being poor and having a child. You are such a law-abiding fellow that you are going to watch your child struggle every day and maybe go hungry some nights when you could do one simple crime to end that struggle forever and whose only negative consequence is having a black mark on an abstract “criminal record”? And you’re going to do this despite massive pressure from family, culture, any woman in your life, and the normalization of such actions?
I think I could make a strong argument that in the case being discussed not committing a crime is at best foolish and at worst deeply immoral.
One thing we 100% do know is that jail is not working to stop reoffending in the vast majority of cases, and as the article suggests this is at great expense to the tax payer.
Your suggestion was to pay convicted criminals not to repeat offend. That is not quite the same thing.
> ... it’s not as if there would be no consequences for repeat offenders or people who took the money and carried on breaking the law.
There would be only positive consequences for first time offenders so people who might not otherwise commit a crime would be highly incentivized to do so.
Just because you believe one way of thinking about things does not mean that it will automatically be true. These things need to be tested to see if they help and I'm happy to be wrong.
No. I'm using a pretty basic economic principle to show why your idea is a terrible one. People respond to incentives. If you incentivize crime, you get crime.
> let's give a counter example - in Portugal where they have decriminalised drugs
Terrible example. Get back to me when Portugal pays people the first time they do drugs.
> These things need to be tested to see if they help
No, they don't. You are under the illusion that all hypotheses are equal. There is absolutely nothing controversial about the idea that incentivizing behaviors leads to more of those behaviors.
The irony is your argument doesn't work without this principle. You are arguing that by incentivizing going on the straight-and-narrow, there will be a reduction in recidivism. I agree! That would work!
The flipside is that you're also incentivizing people to commit their first crime. You say that's not true. This leads to a contradiction in your argument. Therefore your argument is invalid. QED.
> ...and I'm happy to be wrong.
You're not happy, though. You keep coming back to this ridiculous idea, even though it is obviously wrong on its face.
But the reason most of these people are in prison in the first place is they don't have a good track record of controlling their behavior. So this idea seems predicated on their doing something that we already have good reason to believe they won't.
Worse, going to prison or even jail just wrecks your life. You lose your job, most likely your house, your family suffers hugely, and you have a black mark if you do try to get any legitimate job in the future. It requires a lot of resilience and ability to delay gratification to bounce back from that. Of course the lack of those characteristics is probably a big part of what landed the person in prison in the first place.
Prison seems pretty bad. On the other hand, there has to be some sort of deterrent to committing crime, and for the worst cases, the public simply needs to be protected from some people. You see the lack of this in SF now. The police don't act in cases of smaller misdemeanors like shoplifting or car breakins, and so they're rampant.
For people that have poor future orientation, prison isn't that great of a deterrent. If you're going to use punishment as a deterrent, it works much better if it's consistent and quickly follows the behavior to be extinguished. Being arrested and sentenced only with some probability, and perhaps days or months later just doesn't work all that well. If we take, for example, shoplifting, if potential shoplifters knew that the second they walked out the door of the store, with 100% probability, that they were going to get punched in the face and the stuff taken away from them, no one would ever do it.
I think we need to come up with punishments that are less severe, more immediate, and more certain.
Example: there were four prisoners to each guard. Now there are two.
That just increased the per inmate cost.
Harvard probably has fewer guards per inmate.
Maybe more prison automation could help? But I wouldn't know.
[0]https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
I get the visiting hours being harder on families. But look at mississipi which costs 49.79/day or 18k/year [1]. With a 57k/year savings you could buy air travel for up to 50 visits per year.
Prison is not punishment.
Prison is not rehabilitation (although this is desirable and we should definitely try it).
But I get what they're saying.
They committed a crime, and then losing their freedom(got locked up), but that does not mean the rest law-abiding citizens shall provide all free lodging for them! This is ridiculous.
So often the human rights group care more about criminals' rights while ignoring the ordinary Joe that is working hard to make ends meet by following all the rules.
[..]The higher costs are driven by escalating pay and benefit packages negotiated by unions that represent prison guards and other staff. It's an example of how powerful public-sector unions keep the state from getting spending under control, even when the need for such spending plummets.
That example comes from a new report by the Vera Institute for Justice. "Despite a decline in both its prison population and the number of prison staff, California's prison spending rose $560 million between 2010 and 2015, primarily because salary, pension and other employee and retiree benefits continued to increase, also a result of union-negotiated increases," explained the New York-based think tank that promotes criminal-justice reform.[..]
[..]California is unusual from a national perspective, per the report. Thirteen states have reduced prison populations since 2010, but they've also cut their prison spending by $1.6 billion. Seven states have increased their populations, but have managed to decrease their prison spending, (by $254 million). Fifteen states have increased their prison populations and also increased their total prison spending by a half-billion dollars.
California is in an ignominious group of 10 states that saw declines in the prison population since 2010, but which increased spending by $1.1 billion. Furthermore, California's spending increase accounts for more than half of that number. California has by far the costliest system of incarceration in the nation at more than $75,000 per inmate per year—more than triple the average cost of the 18 states with the least-costly rates.[..]
[..]The study focuses on the 2010 to 2015 period, and some major prison-related laws—e.g., 2014's Proposition 47, which reduced many felonies to misdemeanors and resulted in further reductions of prison populations—got started toward the end of the study period. Yet, if anything, these disturbing spending trends only accelerated in the ensuing years.
"Gov. Jerry Brown's spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1 includes a record $11.4 billion for the corrections department while also predicting that there will be 11,500 fewer inmates in four years because voters in November approved earlier releases for many inmates," wrote Don Thompson for The Associated Press. "Since 2015, California's per-inmate costs have surged nearly $10,000, or about 13 percent." That's a whopping increase in a short period of time, and even more amazing given that state just raised gas taxes because it claims to be out of cash.[..]