The Economics of the American Prison System
smartasset.com
smartasset.com
1) Are privately run prisons better for the good of society than publicly run prisons? What does the research say? How biased is the research? etc.
2) More importantly, regardless of whether they are private or public prisons, how do we get less people to be living in them? What are our other options?
Last time on HN I asked this and the answer was, "support NORML". I then went and tried to find other organizations looking to make sweeping changes. I was not successful.
The problem with NORML is their image. No serious person in business can support an organization that uses a POT leaf as their symbol and seems to be primarily an organization for hippies to sit around and talk about the government. I realize that their image may not be their reality, but I can't write a company matched check to them without people wondering "what I'm smoking".
So... The question I am asking is, what can I do about one of the largest human rights atrocities ever committed by the United States, my country? Its obvious that at the very least we can move a lot of people to different types of facilities. We can probably do a lot more than that, possibly reversing 45 years of discriminatory drug laws and possibly taking increased societal risks to reduce the amount of years the average American spends in prison.
I'm somewhat distraught that this problem exists but I haven't come up with a solution yet.
Anyone out there have any ideas on who I can support or what can be done?
[ADDED] The Norml image problem is probably bad on the west coast, but is a deal breaker on the east coast.
Hippies? Really? The entire Drug War is a failure and should be offensive to anybody who treasures civil liberties. If you passively accept the status quo then YOU are the problem, because this madness only continues because of sanctimonious people like YOU.
Until NORML changes their entire brand, their effectiveness will be limited. They do rally hippies which is a positive, but they won't get serious business people who cannot afford reputation risk no matter the cause.
If the people in NORML were serious, they would drop the pot leaf and start talking about civil liberties over "legalization".
> reputation risk
Do you really think donating to NORML could damage your career? Buffer it with donations to EFF,ACLU,etc. and it's unimpeachable political speech.
My point is that I don't get the chance to argue why I made a donation to NORML if my name just appears on a company wide list. People see it, they make assumptions.
NORML's failure to see how their branding is weak for large donor support is a huge problem for that organization succeeding in its goal.
This can be applied to as low as conversation among friends or as high as a politician who must choose whether to A) Support individual freedom and civil liberties or B) support drug addicts and criminal, burn out hippies in a drug induced free for all.
If you cannot see how NORML's image aligns anyone who supports it with the later, you should really take a step back and ask yourself the following:
Do you put your affiliation with that on a resume? What are the impacts of that? If you are in tech on the west coast, you may get away with it. If you are in a serious business on the east coast, you will have trouble getting hired.
Change from NORML to a hypothetical organization called: "Organization For the Reduction of Human Rights Violations on US Soil."
Now instead of your resume getting thrown away, you get to talk about how people are dying in prison who should instead be productive members of society.
The point is, I don't care about NORML, I care about trying to figure out a way to get this country out of this mess and I believe that NORML is branded incorrectly to achieve that goal.
IMO, Absolutely not.
>2) More importantly, regardless of whether they are private or public prisons, how do we get less people to be living in them? What are our other options?
Answer jury summonses. Learn about jury nullification. Pay attention to local elections.
> I then went and tried to find other organizations looking to make sweeping changes. I was not successful.
The Innocence Project of Texas http://www.ipoftexas.org/
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition http://www.leap.cc/
Then to top it off, you have to get all members of the jury to agree to it. With that you run up against morals and predispositions of the various jurors. It would have to be a pretty damn extreme law, one unfavorable with the public as a whole, to get caught up by a nullification and you can be the authorities would do their best to stack the deck
The Innocence Project is amazing, but does not address the widespread solution we need. A noble organization, ABSOLUTELY!
As for your first comment:
>1) Are privately run prisons better for the good of society than publicly run prisons? What does the research say? How biased is the research? etc. IMO, Absolutely not.
This is the general opinion of HN, but is it the truth? I'm sure someone has addressed this opinion with honest analysis, but I don't know where it exists. Stating that "they are making a profit" is not good enough because there is more to the question than that.
Thanks again for pointing to LEAP. That is definitely a better marketed organization than NORML.
NORML, the Marijuana Policy Project, and LEAP Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, are the groups that I am most aware of doing advocacy in this respect.
Why is it a deal breaker to share common ground with a group that some people stereotype as undesirable? I mean, prohibition of drugs is one of the main drivers of the huge prison population.
On the West Coast of the US you may be able to get away with open support of NORML at a tech company, but on the East Coast it is pretty much a no go at a serious organization.
If I want to make a donation and have my company match it, I can't make it to NORML without having people judge me while I am not aware of it. That is a complete deal breaker.
I hope their is an organization out there working on this that is doing in the name of enhanced civil liberties. Currently, it is easy for someone to say "You are supporting a bunch of hippies?" I want it easy for me to say "I can't believe you aren't supporting basic civil liberties"!
It's unfortunate that people make such value judgments, but I've worked at places like that too.
Prisons in general are bad for society. Prison stays are highly deleterious to people and the communities they will return to. Non-violent crimes should certainly not result in prison time, there is no productive reason for that to happen. Property crimes (e.g. theft) are come about from how society is structured and we would be better off addressing social inequality than investing in increasing incarceration. Violent crimes may be better handled with systems that are structurally different from the current prison system.
> 2) More importantly, regardless of whether they are private or public prisons, how do we get less people to be living in them? What are our other options?
War on drugs must end. Social inequality with regards to poverty and homelessness need to be seriously tackled. Racism and sexism need to be addressed from a systemic aspect. Finally for those violent crimes that do require some kind of social response alternatives to the current prison system should be explored.
There is the cost of the entire justice system - police, judges, attorneys, and so on.
Add to that the lost productivity of inmates who could be holding down jobs instead of just twiddling their thumbs.
Then you have costs borne by the inmates' families to visit them, make up for their absence etc.
I think the overall cost to American society from locking up so many people is staggering when you add it all up. Unfortunately people still vote for politicians who promise to be "tough(er) on crime" and the cycle continues...
I've known areas of my town get dramatically safer after some big drug busts. The drug trade has significant externalities.
I got it! We'll outlaw poverty!
The idea that they will turn to some other criminal pursuit...yeesh. It's like you've never even met any dealers. Imagine that tomorrow, the government made your job illegal. Would you be like, "Well, that does it. I guess I'd better start brushing up on my raping, murdering, and insider trading," or would you maybe not go all-out breaking whatever laws you could? It may shock you to realize that because the hypothetical dealer is breaking the law in one respect, he is best served by not breaking the law in any other respect, in order to not draw attention to himself.
Lastly, we don't have to speculate what will happen, there are countries which have decriminalized drug use -- US states too. Marijuana has been decriminalized in Alaska for almost 40 years, although no one seems to know this. The sky has stubbornly refused to fall.
Violence may not be required however in cases where everyone is already scared witless of them. Drug crime and other crime go hand in hand.
If you legalize drugs completely , then serious businesses run by people with MBAs , Venture capital, marketing teams, legal departments etc come into the game. Rather than street level violence, battles are not fought in patent courts and with government lobbying.
Those who are currently dealing drugs don't know how to play this game and will lose.
They can't go and get a straight job because they have no provable work history, probably a criminal record and few contacts outside of the "underworld". They also have become accustomed to a lifestyle of nice cars and (possibly multiple) high maintenance girlfriends, so McDonalds isn't going to cut it.
So they will look for other lucrative opportunities where the MBAs don't want to compete with them (because it is illegal).
"Drug crime and other crime go hand in hand." [Citation Needed]
"Those who are currently dealing drugs don't know how to play this game and will lose." And then get a real job.
"They can't go and get a straight job because they have no provable work history, probably a criminal record and few contacts outside of the "underworld". They also have become accustomed to a lifestyle of nice cars and (possibly multiple) high maintenance girlfriends, so McDonalds isn't going to cut it." You have no idea what you're talking about. The margins are not that high.
Your image of drug dealers applies to an extremely small minority. You must only know what these people are like from TV.
You claimed that drug dealing is a non violent activity. I showed an example of where that is demonstrably not the case. Roughly 65% of the coke in the US comes through mexico where it is causing serious violence.
In my home country (UK) we also have problems with violence and intimidation from drug gangs in many deprived areas.
Well, this isn't very far from that.
By the way, spending less on rehabilitation doesn't just save money now, it also brings higher recidivism and so makes for a healthier future market for these corporations...
The CCA logo (as seen on the flag) even looks vaguely OCP-ish, like something out of the particularly '80s vision of the corporate future as envisioned in the original Robocop.
"spending less on rehabilitation doesn't just save money now, it also brings higher recidivism and so makes for a healthier future market for these corporations..."
Exactly. And let's not forget that these same corporations who run prisons also lobby for harsher sentencing, mandatory minimums, looser prison labor laws, and so forth.
It's a sticky subject because nobody -- politician, man on the street, mother of children, or law-abiding citizen -- wants to come right out and say that he or she is advocating for prisoner's rights. Nobody's ever won an election being "soft" on crime (at least not to my knowledge). So the prison-industrial complex has it pretty easy, as far as built-in political incentives are concerned. Ultimately their agenda is self-fulfilling, and the social externalities are highly negative. Costs may be cut in the short run, but as you suggest, recidivism means nobody in the system is ever really going to escape it -- hence, we're shortchanging the future to save pennies in the present.
But if one wanted to do so for the practical matter of wasting less money on prisons and having more productive members of society and less crime, then it would behoove one to do so as well.
True, but part of the problem is framing. Since most people won't make political decisions based on careful reflection, you have to have an emotional pull of some sort. Language like "tough on crime" and "keeping communities safe" frames the debate as those who value enforcing the law and safety versus their opponents, who presumably don't.
Instead of playing that game, what aspiring policians will have to do is frame these kinds of things in terms of human rights, not prisoner's rights. Simply accepting the phrase "prisoner's rights" implies that rights can be doled out by government based on how it chooses to classify citizens. This kind of framing can work:
Political challenger, to incumbent: "Do you support human rights?"
Incumbent: "Of course."
Challenger: "Do you consider prisoners to be human beings?"
Incumbent (worried look): "Well...yes, though I would add that..."
Challenger: "Then why do you support things such as prolonged solitary confinement of prisoners--which is widely agreed to be a form of torture--and the outsourcing of our justice system to race-to-the-bottom private corporations that are held to lower standards and have far less oversight?"
The really sad part is that this is just as disingenous as the narrative supplied by the supporters of the prison industrial complex. But if you want to change things from within the political system you just have to convince voters the other guy is the bad guy.
It's not really clear that being nicer to criminals was the cause of the crime boom nor that getting tough on crime stopped it, but I think the majority of people who lived through this era see it that way. And right now they are also the majority of people who vote (older people tend to vote more often). I suspect that arguments like these won't work for another 20 to 30 years.
Maybe a startup designed solely to imprison IP violators, or solely to hold patent violators or people who break private website terms of service or something like that.
Maybe a robot guard (or guard tower) to be teleoperated from cheap labor in India, or not operated at all, just pattern match and shoot people who look like they are violating the rules.
Something like the MOOC "movement" but dedicated to selling to private prison administrators for their prisoners?
Implementing something like "a scanner darkly" is going to happen anyway, startup or not.
Maybe a more advanced higher tech house arrest ankle bracelet system?
OK, but what's the benefit? What is the damage to society and economy an average criminal causes over the course of a year? How much in property, lost trust, mental and physical injuries, increased spending on security, etc. does it cost to have the guy on the loose?
How much of that benefit are prisons eating? I'd love to see an analysis but my guess would be that housing an inmate for ~30k is a bargain.
Those incarcerated for drug use could potentially be making the government a profit. The only negative effects on society are associated with the supply line, not the individual's behaviour. If some drugs were legalised the net benefit to society would be positive, increased income via taxation and improved relations between the police and the public(a large portion of which are drugs users).
2. A huge and expensive tragedy of justice and of economic policy. Imprisoning people for non-violent drug charges takes what are often productively employed people out of the work force and turns them into a unit of negative productivity, taking with them, probably another additional person by the time you account for all of the officers and support staff needed for running a huge prison infrastructure. People imprisoned even for drug charges rarely re-enter the workforce, at least not at any reasonable level. After release, they are stigmatized and often victimized again through various ex-con hire subsidy programs.
Anecdote/heresay: There is just such an employer in my town. They treat regular employees pretty badly, and Project RIO types, even worse. These poor guys don't make enough to support themselves, and thus have low/no job mobility. They all live in a gov't housing thing, on the wrong side of the tracks. They are pretty much destined to fail.
Where is the line between giving prisoners something to do vs giving them to much?
Are we working on ways to keep prisons from being "Criminal University"?
Awful, No air conditioning, terrible food, not enough to do, terrible medical care, exactly what you would expect in Texas, only worse.
>Where is the line between giving prisoners something to do vs giving them to much?
Idle hands and so forth. Prison officials have very little with which to manage inmates' behavior. Anything that can stave off the intense boredom of incarceration would probably help in the management of prisons. Unfortunately for everyone, the Wyndham School System program (education for inmates) was recently cancelled in Texas to cut expenses. I expect that will just make it even more difficult for future ex-convicts to succeed in any meaningful way after release, increasing recidivism.
>Are we working on ways to keep prisons from being "Criminal University"?
I'm not sure what you mean, but we sure do seem to produce a lot of inmates in this country.
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/06/the-role-of-the-p...
http://www.policymic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-snake-h...
[1] http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/04/23/25-correctional-off...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10747919
http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/luzerne-s-other-disgraced-j...
Also this: http://www.texasprisonbidness.org/
I flagged this post.
But I would argue that in a way that articles like this should get viewed and discussed by the HN crowd in the context of hacking civilization.
This particular subject absolutely defines the world in which we live in, and a it's not a pretty picture. It happens because we let it, and we let it because we collectively don't care. We collectively don't care because we remain (intentionally) ignorant of the situation.
It's turtles of despair all the way down....