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

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-prison-costs-20170604-htmlstory.html

by omegaworks • 9 years ago

525 403 9 years ago

latimes.com

scandox2• 9 years ago

Love when the problem as stated contains its own solution.

mamon• 9 years ago

You mean: send all the prisoners to Harvard, let them have education and well-paying job? :)

pavlov• 9 years ago

Or send all Harvard business school students to prison? It's a bit more expensive on the short term, but will save money on the long term by reducing the economic damage they might do if free.

stoolpigeon• 9 years ago

I think it helps show the cost of crime and look at different solutions but I don't see how it contains the solution.

I had a car stolen by some guys once. They used my car to drive around breaking in to other cars and stealing things. The police caught them and took me to me car so that I could get it back. I also had to go through all the stuff in the back and tell the police what wasn't mine. It turns out they had been arrested in California.

California sent them to Arizona so that they could go to a trade school. All their needs were covered, they just needed to complete the program. Instead the failed out and then went on a crime spree in their new home state. I'm sure it was a very cost effective solution for CA but I'm not sure about society as a whole.

IIAOPSW• 9 years ago

I would be legit interested in some data on mandatory trade school v. traditional prison. You're anecdote doesn't look good but lets at least give the idea a fair shake.

scandox2• 9 years ago

It's a numbers game really. At present the numbers show that prison makes people worse. I'll add my own anecdata and say that I've seen people come out of prison much worse than they went in.

And, if, for $75,000 per person per annum we can't work towards better outcomes, then I think we can agree something is very wrong with the current approach.

ido• 9 years ago

Isn't an inordinately large percentage of US prison population due to fairly minor drug offences?

I would think the argument is that fewer people need to be imprisoned for crimes that don't really negatively affect society as much as sending them to prison does.

Sacho• 9 years ago

California sent them to Arizona so that they could go to a trade school. All their needs were covered, they just needed to complete the program. Instead the failed out and then went on a crime spree in their new home state. I'm sure it was a very cost effective solution for CA but I'm not sure about society as a whole.

The problem is identification; we can't identify which people will end up being "good guys" or "bad guys" after any form of prison or community work. There are some extreme cases where you can make the determination(although beware the slippery slope of discrimination that seeps in..), but for the rest, what do you do? This is a genuine question. Jailing people is both costly and doesn't seem to have a positive effect on their life prospects. Many people that go into jail for a minor offense end up incapable of finding a job(felon status) or a place in society(everyone left them and moved on) and they turn to crime and re-offend.

I agree that this doesn't contain "the" solution, but it's a good way to shine the light that our current solution isn't working either. Prison serves as a "out of sight, out of mind" choice and few people concern themselves with what happens to inmates once they try to reintegrate into society. If we're going to continue jailing people, then we should also look to mitigate the adverse effects - look for ways to integrate people after they serve their time, look into reducing the number of offenses you can be jailed for, etc.

cjCamel• 9 years ago

Bizarre comparison!

Prisons need to safely and securely provide accommodation for "high-risk, high-need" human beings to survive and be rehabilitated.

Universities have a wholly different set of requirements.

abricot• 9 years ago

I agree. Maybe they should try comparing the cost with 24 hour psychological health treatment.

ianai2• 9 years ago

One could say "high risk, high need" also applies to: -People otherwise neglected by society, like minorities. -The impoverished -Children/young adults

Maybe if society actually prepared its people for...itself (society) we'd have fewer problems?

I'm willing to bet $1 of room, board, and education alleviate $100 (or more) of incarceration.

Current US budget for prisons: 74 billion Current US budget for education: 68 billion

lb1lf2• 9 years ago

(...) and be rehabilitated.

-Never having experienced the US penal system first hand, I cannot be too bombastic - but from the outside, it sure looks as if rehabilitation has taken a back seat to punishment.

If one were of a sufficiently cynical disposition, it would be tempting to assume that all involved parties (except the inmates) has more to gain from keeping people locked up than rehabilitating them.

cm21872• 9 years ago

Rehabilitation must exist but it must also take the back seat to punishment. In Europe there is this strange concept that developed that crime is a sort of disease and that prisons are kind of hospital. So there is some expectation that a criminal will be "cured" when leaving jail. And many judges got to the thinking that crime is caused by poverty and since jail will not cure poverty we should not send criminals to prison. And you end up with guys with a 10 pages long criminal record and who haven't spent a night in jail.

jopsen3• 9 years ago

high-risk high-need human beings belongs in a mental health facility, not a prison...

nilved2• 9 years ago

Prisons need to safely and securely provide accommodation for "high-risk, high-need" human beings to survive and be rehabilitated.

lmao

smsm422• 9 years ago

Does this include housing, food, healthcare, etc. for Harvard figure? Looks like not, so the comparison is kinda meaningless.

Also:

   The price for each inmate has doubled since 2005, even as
   court orders related to overcrowding have reduced the 
   population by about one-quarter. Salaries and benefits for 
   prison guards and medical providers drove much of the increase.

I looked for the word "union" in the article and it's not there. I guess it's an unsolvable mystery why the costs raise. And even if the number of inmates declines (as it already did, according to the article) would the workforce be reduced? Doesn't look likely, unions are very powerful voting blocks.

parhurs• 9 years ago

So you looked for evidence to support your a priori beliefs, didn't find it and still made insinuations. Good on you.

smsm422• 9 years ago

Er, what? I am struggling to understand how your comment relates to what I wrote. Once more:

1. Comparison of Harvard tuition to prisoner's costs is meaningless as done in the article

2. The article itself mentions costs raise mainly because of labor costs

3. The article itself mentions that drop in the inmates number did not reduce labor costs

4. The article does not mention any of the factors influencing labor costs.

Which evidence you think I am missing?

WalterBright2• 9 years ago

Another option is to put non-violent offenders in camps. The deal is if they stay in the camp and follow the rules, they can serve out their sentence there. Run away and they go to the real prisons.

pvg3• 9 years ago

It's not a very effective option because non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated. You could send them all home and still be more or less where you started.

diggan• 9 years ago

Now I'm not american, but "non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated" didn't sound right to me.

According to "Table 1.1. Estimated number of felony convictions in state courts, 2006" [0] it seems that only 18% of convictions are because of violent crimes, leading to 82% being non-violent, that doesn't feel like "a small fraction" to me. It's not the latest number, but feels you're trying to give a different view than reality.

- [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_S...

FullMtlAlcoholc13• 9 years ago

I think we focus on non-violent offenders too much. There are many "violent" offenders in prison who aren't social deviants, but are a product of their environment. It is a bit sad, but violence is often employed to solve problems especially in low-income neighborhoods.

I think just as much attention needs to be paid to younger first or second offenders who haven't been swallowed up by criminality or prisons, including more wiping of their records as an incentive for good behavior.

If you're labeled a felon, there isn't much incentive to play it straight since the only jobs you can get pay very little. It just makes crime that much more profitable and attractive

hansthehorse• 9 years ago

If somebody is so much of a non threat to society he can be housed in a voluntary prison camp he shouldn't be in prison at all. Establish a real community service program, not one that you can pay your way out of, and sentence them to service hours. There are dozens of ways to allow a petty law breaker to contribute.

danielam4• 9 years ago

The threat a person poses is only one consideration. Justice requires punishment (btw, mercy only makes sense in light of punishment as justly deserved; you can only be merciful to someone who deserves punishment). If the crime committed is proportional with imprisonment, even if that person is not a threat, there is nothing unjust about that in principle. (The question of whether there are people in prison who ought not to be is a particular consideration not relevant here.) There are perhaps practical considerations that can affect the form the punishment may take, of course, but the point here is that threat posed is not the only or even the most essential consideration where just punishment is concerned.

tomjen35• 9 years ago

Lets say I run some scam against tax-preparation companies and get away with millions over some months but are caught red-handed. Clearly I am not dangerous to society, but at the same time I can never really work of the money. Would you still put me in the community program?

Or take the other case, I am high on drugs and crash a car with several of my kids in it. At the same time I clearly didn't mean to harm them - you wouldn't have problem with me having the kids if I wasn't on drugs. Assume further (because this is often the case) that I skip out of rehab. What would you do with me?

tomjen35• 9 years ago

That is actually how it works in Denmark, for all prisoners unless the prosecution proves that you are a danger to others. It is more of a building than a camp, but it has no fence around it so you can just walk of.

flexie• 9 years ago

I get it - it's tempting to solve the Harvard Business School issue by sending the MBA students to prison before they wreck havoc on the economy. But I'm not sure their dads would pay the exceeding tuition.

Also, there is the whole question of whether it would be fair to the other prisoners. Pretty soon the prison economy would be infested with cigarette derivatives and yard swaps.

andy_ppp• 9 years ago

I'd like to see what would happen in prison if these Harvard types destabilised the market...

splike• 9 years ago

MBAs destabilise the market? By taking a six sigma approach to introduce cryptocurrencies into the prison system, I don't see how it couldn't be a success.

shagie3• 9 years ago

That was recently answered... http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-series-casts-bernie-mad...

“Bernie really was a successful businessman with quite original insights into the market, and he’s continued applying his business instincts in prison,” Fishman said. “At one point, he cornered the hot chocolate market. He bought up every package of Swiss Miss from the commissary and sold it for a profit in the prison yard. He monopolized hot chocolate! He made it so that, if you wanted any, you had to go through Bernie.”

The search for "madoff swiss chocolate" will find many more articles based on the above quote.

walshemj2• 9 years ago

Just like in the producers :-)

"While Max and Franz earnestly supervise rehearsals, Leo continues their old scam - overselling shares of the play to their fellow prisoners, and even to the warden. The song "Prisoners of Love" plays while the credits roll."

eumenides1• 9 years ago

Think of the economic efficiency we would achieve by just sending the HBS kids en masse to prison.

Instead of wasting time and resources to select the "best" possible level of future criminal, we just throw the whole lot in jail.

usmeteora3• 9 years ago

Back to the topic, prisons are just another haven for contract robbing. The prison contracts everything from security to mopping. Everything is 3x more expensive. Prison costs are a sink to our society.

Except taxpayers foot the bill. Theres an economic incentive to keeping crime low and right now were all being robbed blind, in this area as well (because yes there are too many to count)

The amount who are released within 5 years with little to no recovery or are going to end up in an even worse state, with even less of an ability to get a job, are more likely to continue to commit crime to make ends meet.

Before we talk about Harvard grads destroying the eocnomy, lets talk about making it less and less likely for 75% of the people imprisoned to ever be able to contribute to society once they are released.

We have a very protestant implementation of prison, they exist to punish people, not to reabilitate people or address the issues, and everyone ends up paying a higher cost with more damage in the end.

Yes people who are doing serious crimes should be put away, but we know that most of the time thats not the case, and furthemore, we know that alot of serious crimes including rape, have men released within 5 years, while a first time offender selling green could land 15 in prison.

Maybe.. http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/11/14/some-european-pri...

ffxtian• 9 years ago

Before we talk about Harvard grads destroying the eocnomy, lets talk about making it less and less likely for 75% of the people imprisoned to ever be able to contribute to society once they are released.

Why not both?

walshemj2• 9 years ago

To play devils advocate prison contracts have valid extra costs you have to vet contactors more than say an office cleaner.

You also have to budget for extra security if your a contractor working in a prison you have to log all of your tools in and out to stop inmates nicking things that could be used as weapons or to aid an escape

smrtinsert• 9 years ago

Do you mean economic incentive to send people to prison (not necessarily the same thing as keeping crime low)

deweyair2• 9 years ago

'The prison contracts everything from security to mopping.'

In the vast majority of American prisons, the prisoners do the mopping. Security is still done by guards, but nearly every other job in the prison is done by the offenders. It's much cheaper this way - for state prisons average starting wage for non-industrial jobs is $0.25/hr. Industrial jobs don't start much higher, but they tend to have a higher cap around $2.50/hr instead of the standard cap of $1.00/hr. There are a few cases of offenders making minimum wage, but these are the exception rather than the norm.

Prisons are run by the offenders - it's cheaper this way.

narrator• 9 years ago

I had a friend who lived in Bisbee, Arizona, which is a small town next to the border that has a big border patrol station in the city. He said that because of the border patrol presence there aren't any illegal aliens around to do construction. He could only get cheap labor from ex-convicts. It made me think that typically ex-cons have formed the lowest rung in the economic ladder that illegal aliens now fulfill.

jondubois• 9 years ago

Yes the idea of having a criminal record is silly - It's a self-fulfilling label. Once you are labeled a criminal, it only makes it harder to get a job and give up crime.

Besides, crime has become such an arbitrary thing. A corporation is allowed to quietly syphon away billions of dollars from society using clever government lobbying and tax avoidance schemes but if a member of society physically steals something from a corporation, they'll go to jail. Why don't corporations like JP Morgan and their executives get a permanent criminal record when they are found guilty of criminal activity?

Either it should be consistent for all or it should be abolished entirely.

hari_seldon_• 9 years ago

Quick aside, many people who go to Harvard Business School receive financial aid or pay for it out of their own pocket -- the school determines need based on your assets and not those of your parents. While there probably are still students who get support from rich dads, it is not the same kind of only-for-the-rich place that you are depicting...

specialist• 9 years ago

Absurd comparison is meant to highlight the futility, not the [un]fairness.

FullMtlAlcoholc13• 9 years ago

Think about that for a second...$75K/yr for abhorrent, yet improving conditions and you'll come to the correct conclusion that contractors are absolutely fleecing not only the p̶r̶i̶s̶o̶n̶s̶ tax payers, but the prisoners themselves.

Half a lifetime ago, I had to spend a weekend in jail while visiting a friend in California (accused of theft by a drunk lady who couldn't find her credit cards and fingered me instead of realizing that she may have left it at the bar. The best part was when I had to fly back out for a court date, they told me they were dropping the charge for an obvious lack of evidence. This decision was made on the actual court date, so I got to waste even more money on airfare and travel ). I was surprised at the entrepreneurial zeal of those who have no issue profiting from misery and suffering. In the LA area at least, many former/older celebrities are investors or owners of prison supply companies. Most notable was Bob Barker's company which sold travel-sized generic toothpaste for $7. In this case, the price is wrong, Bob.

The fingerprinting machine was the size of a ultra-deluxe 70's Xerox machine, regularly needed service, and looked like it had a sticker price around 5 figures (a feature that is just an add-on to $500 phones.) I think that 10x-20x inflation is pretty consistent across the board in the American penal system. The collect calling system is also beyond ridiculous given the near zero cost of landline telecommunications and that most cell phones can't receive collect calls. The food you're eating is the absolute worst (in terms of taste of course) nutritionally. Nearly everything is processed and is done so in the cheapest way possible. When I say as cheap as possible, I mean that the $.49 Nissin Ramen is an actual delicacy (No exaggeration. Some of the inmates would pool their resources together and "cook" the ramen in a giant plastic bag with hot water that surely must be leeching pcb's and/or phthalates from the container.) After a few months of that diet, even the most physically fit people developed a weird type of gut and loss of musculature. I didn't eat anything while there, but I observed that the only nutritional guideline that could possibly be met that of 2K+ calories/day. I know it's not Club Med, but that type of diet is a blocker for any type of rehabilitation. It was depressing to look at and had the effect of making one more docile and depressed.

So while California may spend $75K per prisoner, the value they spend is probably closer to $7K. It's kind of brilliant in a sadistic way, as if the prisons, their programs, food, and environment were designed to maximize recidivism.

Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if some elements were designed in this way

riazrizvi• 9 years ago

Correction: contractors are fleecing tax payers.

Shivetya• 9 years ago

Correction : Union.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association is very powerful in state and local elections and through association with other providers who are also union pretty much have the state on the ropes.

Contractors might be part of the problem but they only are as much as CCPOA allows for. As in, you play by their rules or you don't get to play.

Same reason we spend so much on education and don't see improvement. Nothing is about the prisoner or the student, it is all about political control

mowenz3• 9 years ago

Remember when a small team built a better healthcare.gov? Why not open up well-regulated competitive markets for these kinds of problems? Let some bright people solve them by going at them with their ingenuity. The fastest way towards progress is fair and honest competition.

Government can regulate the market by setting the goals: low violence inside, low costs, low re-offences of released, high security, high educational opportunities

FullMtlAlcoholc13• 9 years ago

I think the best answer to these problems we face is competition.

I'm sorry, but that is the worst answer. Perverse incentives and moral hazard problems not withstanding, incarceration as a market, profit from human misery and suffering is absolutely morally repugnant.

Remember when a small team built a better healthcare.gov?

You're comparing apples to naked mole rats. Running a website (that does exactly what you tell it) is a wee bit different than caring for violent, mentally disabled, borderline personalities, sexually, mentally abusive and abused, etc. individuals. (I'm including a lot of the guards in this description too)

Businesses that get high marks automatically get more prisoners, ones that get low marks get none.
That's a lot worse than gov run facilities, but gov facilities are probably not as good as properly regulated market.

Incarceration, and security in general, is the very definition of a market failure and one of the few things that a government needs to provide in the most liberal, laissez-faire economy

Think about how this will play out in reality, considering that prison guard unions and companies wield a large amount of political capital and no one really cares about the welfare of prisoners, if they're being mistreated/abused, etc. Companies can cook their books and no one will care.

We also live in the era where speech=money. Prison corporations spend large amounts of money lobbying. And they lobby for the sickest things possible: increases in sentences, increases in mandatory minimums, fighting against medical marijuana legalization just so they can imprison and profit off of "scary, criminal mastermind potheads"

Our economics is so backwards that we include spending on prisons in our GDP. Growth in the prison sector should not be added as growth in the overall economy

The market solution will not magically erase the culture of the prison economy or change its major players

csmark3• 9 years ago

Or just ship em off to Norway!

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/this-norwegian-prison...

coldtea2• 9 years ago

Remember when a small team built a better healthcare.gov? Why not open up well-regulated competitive markets for these kinds of problems?

Because the solution ("making prison a market") is what caused the problem in the first place.

And because some things, like treating people in prison humanely, you don't want to live to the lowest bidder (though even that would be an improvement over the worse than third world shithole that are us prisons).

gambiting3• 9 years ago

Does the US court system not refund travel cost? Over here you can get full refund of travel cost if you are summoned to court(within reason - if you travel first class you will only get price of a normal ticket back).

ithkuil• 9 years ago

where is "over here"?

FullMtlAlcoholc13• 9 years ago

Does the US court system not refund travel cost?

I'm sorry, I'm actually laughing out loud for that one. No, they do not refund any cost you incur for going to court.

Luckily, I wasn't accused of any drug crimes or they may have seized my car and kept it under then-existing asset forfeiture (legal theft) laws

SilasX• 9 years ago

No. When I got a jury summons in SF, the notice said they didn't give jurors free parking.

anigbrowl17• 9 years ago

LOL no - not laughing at you, but laughing so as not to cry at the injustice. The US approach to this issue would be that you should spend more money suing the person who made the false accusation against you.

Although it's a little dense, a really good book on American legal culture is Adversarial Legalism by robert Kagan. Culturally the US is absolutely obsessed with property rights and the exhaustive accounting for them has provided fertile soil for a whole forest of complex litigation practices.

Many people would rather spent $10,000 on fighting a court case than pay $500 that they felt was unjustly billed to them. I once worked for a guy who got in a dispute with someone he had hired over ownership of the work product - he had not paid the bill for the photography and so the photographer was sitting on the footage. He took the photographer to small claims court; the court basically said 'meh, pay him what you owe and you, photographer, hand over the footage when he does.' We went outside and my erstwhile boss said 'well I showed him! that's the last time someone sues ME!' I literally walked away on the spot and never returned any of his calls even though he owed me some money; for my own sanity and safety I can not be around someone with that level of cognitive dissonance. I liked the guy, a lot, but he was literally editing reality in his head to fit his feelings from moment to moment. That sort of person is dangerous.

schalab• 9 years ago

You are blaming unethical people for profiting from a flawed system. I would say fixing the system is a easier problem, then fixing humanity as a whole.

For instance, what are the consequences for the mid level government bureaucrat who accepted the 7$ a tube toothpaste contract? It is obviously a flagrant violation with a paper trail. Even if it is revealed he gets a fully paid vacation every year from the bidding company, how do people even hold him accountable?

The government is involved in so many projects and employs so many people, that your one vote every few years means next to nothing.

Democracy was meant as a safeguard against tyranny. It cannot hold individual people in a vast system accountable very well.

You either split up each department in separate elections or reduce the scope and size of the government such that essential services like law and order get maximum visibility and priority.

jmcdiesel2• 9 years ago

You are blaming unethical people for profiting from a flawed system. I would say fixing the system is a easier problem, then fixing humanity as a whole.

Find me a system that isnt flawed...

anigbrowl17• 9 years ago

You are blaming unethical people for profiting from a flawed system

Yes, and? Are unethical people somehow immune from blame for their decision to act unethically? Just because you see an opportunity for profit does not mean you are compelled to take it. That is, after all, the whole basis for incarceration in the first place, otherwise bank robbers would go free on the basis that once they realized how easy it was to rob a bank, they were unable to stop themselves.

wu-ikkyu• 9 years ago

It's kind of brilliant in a sadistic way, as if the prisons, their programs, food, and environment were designed to maximize recidivism.

They are. In this Jon Oliver bit they cite a Powerpoint sales pitch from a prison corporation which notes that high recidivism rates are one of many reasons why you should invest.

https://youtu.be/_Pz3syET3DY?t=673

FullMtlAlcoholc13• 9 years ago

I get sociopaths who have no remorse and don't really have a problem with them per se.

People who do this and try to rationalize their behavior with some flimsy excuse about putting food on the table or keeping America safe are, I'll say it, deplorables.

It's a socially acceptable form of mental torture whose aim is to break you down, not build you back up. In particular, the dehumanization you face from the guards makes one more anti-social.

ironarm• 9 years ago

Just a heads up. The Bob Barker company is not run by the former Price is Right host. AFAIK he's never had anything to do with the company. Just the same name.

Oddly, this company which has been in existence for 20+ years fleecing correctional facilities still doesn't have a wikipedia page, and little is known about them. Would somebody please fix this?

anigbrowl17• 9 years ago

You seem ideally positioned to make a start on this, as you certainly know more about it than I do.

FullMtlAlcoholc13• 9 years ago

I just visited https://www.bobbarker.com/

This is a company that basically makes products of the lowest quality for the cheapest amount possible. An $800 3D printer I've used created higher quality items.

If you want a real laugh, check out the "Mission and values" section of their website. SPOILER: it has by far the least amount of content

FullMtlAlcoholc13• 9 years ago

As an addendum, the most disgusting thing I witnessed was the mandatory racial segregation that was enforced by the guards, ostensibly to make their jobs easier by cutting down on conflicts and physical fights. As a native of Detroit, I know all too well what racial segregation does to your view of the other, the out group(s).

I know it's just a smidge harder and takes a little more effort, but it is beyond crazy that we institutionally indoctrinate inmates into a race-based ideology. This engenders further wedges and future conflicts when inmates are released and trained to view other people with suspicion and mistrust....

Unless that's the point, serving as a useful distraction while the prestige is being performed

danblick• 9 years ago

Strangely, I was just reading about the costs of prison in California because I read an article about "the grave injustice of mandatory sentencing" [1] and was curious about the associated costs to taxpayers.

I don't feel personally affected by this issue, but I get the sense we are sentencing too many people for too long for non-violent drug offenses.

Anyway, the cost of the prison system in California is about $7.9 billion according to:

https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-what-...

or (given 39 million people in California) about $200 per taxpayer (no, that's not the best metric).

If the cost per prisoner is going up because we're releasing people from prisons this year, that's probably a good thing.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/politics/mandatory-minimum-sen...

jopsen3• 9 years ago

The day you suddenly feel affected by the issue, you won't be commenting on HN anymore. And with the questionable state of the US justice system you don't even have to commit a crime. An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent.

Also, the problem is too long sentences for pretty much all crimes.. Americans aren't very forgiving.

BearGoesChirp3• 9 years ago

An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent.

Source?

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

timwaagh• 9 years ago

just outsource this to a low cost area. i'm sure a poor state would love to make some money housing california prisoners.

ptaipale2• 9 years ago

But I guess California prison guards and their unions - probably not an insignificant contributor to election budgets of some politicians - would not like that? They would bring up issues like isolation of prisoners from their friends and families (further increasing their re-offending risk) and dumping of working conditions (immoral). And that if you do this, you won't be re-elected.

HillaryBriss2• 9 years ago

probably not an insignificant contributor to election budgets of some politicians

most definitely not insignificant.

http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/02/are-for-profit-prisons-or-...

erikb• 9 years ago

That sounds totally fine in my eyes. I live outside the US and a relatively cheap lifestyle, so a lot cheaper than the average US citizen. And I say if you add the security requirements of a prison on top of my life I could easily be at $70k-$80k.

What the article probably doesn't consider is the costs of daily life. I can't imagine Harvard+eating+sleeping+takingShowers+heating+clothing really just costs $75k/year, then everybody would go to Harvard, even those who already have a PHD.

jagermo• 9 years ago

Does the number include the housing and living costs for the students?

edit: sorry, that was not a polemic post. But if the number for the students excludes stuff like food, rent or other living costs (e.g. medical checkups) that are "included" with prisoners, the gap might be smaller.

I just checked the numbers for Germany, on the average, a prisoner costs 3281,40 Euro per month, so about 40k Euro or 45k USD per year. So, yeah, it seems like California is getting shafted, somehow.

ygaf• 9 years ago

Don't apologise, the problem lies in other people.

sokoloff• 9 years ago

The Harvard/MIT numbers are around $66K all-in (including room and food).

lorenzhs• 9 years ago

Now go on Google Images and search for pictures of a German prison, and compare that to the situation in California.

z3t4• 9 years ago

It would probably be good for society if those prisoners who wanted would be sent to a school instead. I can't imagine a better punishment!

robertlagrant2• 9 years ago

Remember when "university" meant "for anyone"? Why should Harvard tuition fees cost anywhere near what it costs to incarcerate someone 24/7?

chii2• 9 years ago

both have "facilities", both have lots of administrators, and lease lots of ground/buildings to rent....

eeZah7Ux4• 9 years ago

In many other countries public universities are very cheap and even private ones are cheap compared to US. Also, in many big cities rent is higher than a suburban campus.

marcosdumay2• 9 years ago

Didn't it mean "for all knowledge"? When universities appeared, they were clearly not for everyone.

robertlagrant2• 9 years ago

As in they were universally accessible, not that everyone should go to one. I.e. not just education for the rich, education for the smart.

mch82• 9 years ago

Tuition is a separate issue from annual cost of operations.

agumonkey4• 9 years ago

Gonna throw some weird idea about prison, what about:

- Smaller but individual cells. (have to think about how to keep them very clean)

- No outside yard for crowd.

- No plural bathroom.

Everything you do is for the benefit of society 90% and the rest for you.

- Clean something outside, plant trees I don't know, so you get walk, sun and forest time.

- You can read books, or some journals.

- You can talk to old wise persons.

- You don't have TV, video games.

- You can work (producing parts, fixing things) again for the benefit of society.

- You can do exercice: biking, rowing. Qi gong or Yoga too. (bonus, plug bikes to generate electricity)

- You get simple healthy food: raw veggies, some meat, some fruits. No sauce, no dessert.

Basically a cheap mindful retreat with optional work. Lowering costs as much as possible and prisonner suffering at the same time. You can improve your mind and your body while paying your mistake by being cut from the group. Nothing more.

ekianjo• 9 years ago

i like the idea but there is not much you can do to coerce folks into doing the activities you suggest. Not everyone in prison is of a good nature.

agumonkey4• 9 years ago

Nobody is forced to do anything actually. Only outside things will be done chained, loose enough to do the thing but otherwise no orders or anything.

My idea is that people with nothing to do, and no absurd violent crowds will start to soften and try stuff out of boredom or old desires (say before they turned into the "dark side").

You either stay silently in your cell or you do something that won't cost society and will give them something back, and you will also get something on the way (new knowledge, less boredom, health, etc).

privateprofile• 9 years ago

What about taking a step back to really think about why the US has such an absurd (and the largest) number of people on lockup? [1][2]

Someone certainly stands to gain from it and it certainly isn't society at large, as you can easily grasp from the results on the "war on drugs"... [3]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_in... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#Arrests_and_incar...

agumonkey4• 9 years ago

Right, absurd laws should be removed too.

eeZah7Ux4• 9 years ago

FYI: this is how it works in various other countries

agumonkey4• 9 years ago

Which ones ? I know most in Europe and USA have the usual non single rooms + central yard. Lost of networking causing more illegal acts. Violence to coerce people into helping bad convicts.

Nordic countries have a reverse philosophy. Prison is a step to be helped into being better, it's comfortable, apparently very effective, but it's a bit unfair for peaceful homeless and victims that have lower quality of life. Hence my "frugal but human" proposal.

jlebrech2• 9 years ago

at that cost they should send prisoners to an island and send them $50,000 of care packages.

jopsen3• 9 years ago

No need for an island, just set them up with an apartment, an GPS tracker, and a Netflix account... Most of them will happily sit at home and watch Netflix :)

jlebrech2• 9 years ago

yeah, that would be cheap.

they can have pizza delivered and call hookers lol

smileysteve• 9 years ago

Just a thought, that's also tax free income (if we're assuming not counting prison jobs program.)

rini17• 9 years ago

~9 billion/year total? That would be enough to establish a penal colony on moon, perhaps?

csmark3• 9 years ago

The USA has ~5% of the world's population but 22% of the world's prisoners.

Financial profiting from prisoners: Prison Labor - paid $0.93-0.16/hr California Prisons didn't want to release prisoners because they would loose cheap labor..Courts said they had to: https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court-it-cant-rel...

30% of California forest firefighters are prisoners .. The state argued against parole credit for these prisoners as it would draw down the labor force and lead to depletion of the firefighter force.

Someone already mentioned the profit of commissaries. Some are actually run by private companies operating inside the prison

wonderous• 9 years ago

"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."

Legally speaking seems like in the US that prisoners are slaves.

SOURCE: https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.htm...

pessimizer2• 9 years ago

Yup, it's literally and constitutionally slavery.

wallflower• 9 years ago

13th is a Netflix documentary about this. Warning: It may be quite difficult to watch.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741

danielam4• 9 years ago

If hard labor is the punishment, and the punishment is commensurate with the crime, then no, it's not slavery. Slavery obtains under different conditions.

logfromblammo2• 9 years ago

From my strict reading of the amendment, persons convicted of crimes are not automatically slaves, but could become such if the judge saw fit to include that in sentencing.

That's why the Hollywood version sometimes has the judge say, "I sentence you to ten years hard labor at Camp Rockcrusher." If they just said "ten years confinement in Oubliette Prison," then the prisoner would not be compelled to do anything against their will.

Instead, we oversentence criminals, and use the low-wage prison jobs as a carrot to reduce their prison time. You can work for peanuts and get out early, or you can serve your entire sentence.

The net effect is the same. The rent-seeking profit motive makes the criminal justice system more cruel and exploitative.

bighi2• 9 years ago

Well, it's not like the justice system in the US cares for the constitution. Or even the laws.

theBobBob• 9 years ago

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

vidarh2• 9 years ago

I don't think it is any steps above slavery. In Norway, partly for this reason, prisoners have the legal right to choose education instead of work.

If part of their punishment is meant to be financial restitution, then I believe that should be spelled out in the judgement, and they should be paid market wages for whatever work they do, and that should be garnished accordingly and kept out of the prison system entirely so there is no profit motive to keep people in, and so that the amounts are transparent.

ClassyJacket• 9 years ago

It really doesn't seem very many steps above slavery

Zero. It's literally slavery. The thought of it is barbaric and horrible.

lightedman• 9 years ago

"Keeping people imprisoned mainly so that they can be used as a source of cheap (borderline free) labour is pure exploitation"

California is well-known for this, and Riverside County is one of the primary counties responsible. When you walk into the courtroom, there's a sign that says "Attention CUSTOMERS" instead of "Attention Citizens." Lets you know right off the bat that these people are after nothing but money and should be charged under RICO statutes.

jaggi15• 9 years ago

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

If I ever go through that system there is no way in hell I am coming out of the prison "reformed". Today when I look at a young kid I feel compassion and I will help the kid in need. After coming out of an US Prison I am likely to see everyone else as "these people were responsible for putting me through hell". That lack of compassion is way more worse.

I am not surprised that so many people turn out to be repeat offenders.

dragonwriter2• 9 years ago

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

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

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

Retric2• 9 years ago

There is nothing cheap about this labor, they are paying companies 70k to house someone so they can pay them 20c/h.

csmark3• 9 years ago

Any OSHA or safety regulations don't apply to inmate working conditions. They are literally beyond the reach of the protection of the government in the "workplace."

manquer• 9 years ago

well you are paying the 70k, the labour is benefitting some one else

crpatino2• 9 years ago

The cheapest kind of cheap is the one where you reap the benefits but make someone else pay the bill. And make that bill extra expensive, to add insult to injury.

cubano11• 9 years ago

At the risk of being boorish about the subject...

I was recently released from Las Vegas County Jail (CCDC) where all sentenced inmates, myself included, are forced, by state law, to "work" in some manner in the jail.

In this case, work consisted of 11-hour shifts, 6 days a week, of ultra back-breaking kitchen work. We were not even allowed to have water cups anywhere outside the break room.

They actually yelled faster! faster! as we ran "the line"...I never could get over that one. All that was missing were the whips and the guards with shotguns spitting tobacco.

We processed approx. 10 thousand trays per day, and were constantly harassed and threatened big time by the corporate kitchen staff in charge. It wasn't enough that we were clocking 60-70 hours a week for the grand total of 1 extra tray per meal (not every meal grant you, just the ones we were working during), but you could actually get thrown in the box and lose gain time (more days in jail) for eating a cookie or some trivial such thing.

If you refused to work, you were put in the box and 5 days were added to your sentence.

I did the math...2 shifts of 28 workers 365 days a year...with overtime and all that, approx $50k per week($2.6mil/year) of free basically coerced slave labor for the Aero-mark Corporation that ran the kitchen.

[edits]

77pt773• 9 years ago

If you refused to work, you were put in the box and 5 days were added to your sentence.

Don't you need a judge to determine that?

LeifCarrotson2• 9 years ago

I'm guessing you mean Aramark (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/prison-strike-protest-ar...) not Aero-Mark Corporation, an aerospace company. Though perhaps I'm cynical enough to believe that the latter's mission statement "The Aero-mark team bases its work ethic on unity, quality, and accountability. We are one company, one team, succeeding together." could be espoused by a company that abuses prison labor. These mission statements too often seem to be used as a sort of counterbalance for the actual behavior of the company: the more lofty the mission statement, the more deplorable the behavior.

yjgyhj3• 9 years ago

That is indeed totally crazy.

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

digsmahler• 9 years ago

It's not boorish. I only learned about this practice of new American slavery from a friend who had come out of prison recently. Not enough people are talking about it, so nobody knows this is what's going on. Please, keep talking about it!

tomjen35• 9 years ago

That is arguably a violation of the 13th admentment:

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.

Unless the work was part of the sentence (which I think is totally fair, as a term of restitution) I don't see how what they did was legal. You might want to talk to the ACLU.

TP4Cornholio• 9 years ago

Hard to believe it costs so much if they're getting that much free labor. I would think they'd at least break even.

anigbrowl17• 9 years ago

Yes, it's slavery by another name. Assuming you committed a crime rather than being framed up, that was bad, but the you were treated was itself a crime and I am sorry that you were subjected to that. I've been advocating (not very effectively I'm afraid) for root and branch reform of our criminal justice system for years now, and I feel both angry and ashamed to be a participant in a society where incarceration is treated as an economic opportunity for exploitation rather than a tragic outcome to be remediated.

enknamel3• 9 years ago

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

chrshawkes2• 9 years ago

Well we have laws and plenty of dangerous people who belong in these prisons. Another thing to consider is other countries will execute their prisoners over drug dealing where we put them in prison. There is also the fact that we are the third most populated country and a melting pot combined with plenty of terrible neighborhoods of all ethnicity's.

tdb7893• 9 years ago

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

sgift• 9 years ago

Another thing to consider is other countries will execute their prisoners over drug dealing where we put them in prison.

You can almost always find someone doing something even more horrific. That's a pretty low bar, which is usually not seen as sufficient.

tomjen35• 9 years ago

The commissary right for a prison should probably be a public auction, although that would put more money into the states coffers, not give much lower prices.

jaggi15• 9 years ago

It surprises me that US government has not yet started harvesting organs of the prisoners. Why does someone who has been sentenced for 20 years in prison need his extra kidney for ?

30% of California forest firefighters are prisoners .. The state argued against parole credit for these prisoners as it would draw down the labor force and lead to depletion of the firefighter force.

I guess if some of them die fighting fire we as a society are told to think "good riddance".

Lack of compassion for those wronged by the state is a Achilles heel of US civilization. It is going to cause a damage down further as people's respect for law erodes over time.

rdtsc2• 9 years ago

I can totally see them doing it. It would be the same as the GP described. It wouldn't be compulsory but those that don't agree get their good time reduced, get written up, marked for non-cooperation and so on. In other words there enough mechanisms for this to happen.

paulryanrogers• 9 years ago

I'd like to hope the US is just better at catching criminals than the rest of the world. Sadly these conflicts of interest make that the less likely explanation.

bashinator• 9 years ago

cheap labor

Let's call it what it is - slave labor. Text of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

codyb• 9 years ago

I live in Bedstuy in Brooklyn, a predominately African American community in NYC. Before this I've lived in Albany, NY; Bushwick; and in the housing projects in Brownsville.

NY has recently taken a significant step forward in ensuring adequate access to higher education through the legislature's and Cuomo's initiative to bring tuition free higher education to all NYS residents.

I've become part of several minority communities and met many people with circumstances not so fortunate as mine. It is unbelievable to hear how such a large percentage of these young men have spent time in prison. During highschool I found it odd that in a school with a greater than 60% African American community the AP and IBO classes I was enrolled in were consistently 90% white. I skipped a lot of class back then and was always amazed by the peers who, despite by all standards being considered "the bad kids", could tear a car apart and build it all back together again.

In the projects in Brownsville I learned that my girlfriends mother had secured some sort of video shooting arrangement, she said the entire neighborhood would turn out in their Sunday's finest when the cameras were around. Everyone wanted to see what was going on.

In the projects in Brownsville I noticed an abject lack of activity spaces and an abject lack of green. Brownsville is one of the poorest communities in NYC and it consists primarily of a large number of bleak housing project buildings arrayed across several blocks. I have never heard so many sirens as I did in Brownsville. In the short month I was there my girlfriends mother literally walked into a shoot out to calm some of the younger community members down.

I've always thought to myself that I could do anything anyone else could do (well not always, took a lot of introspection in highschool). I mean, look at the person doing it. They have two arms, I have two arms. They have two legs, I have two legs. They've got a head and brain and I have exactly the same.

It would clearly be obnoxious not to believe in any other person the same way. I believe we're very fortunate to ride the subways in NYC because when you see a child hankering for a balloon you realize that child is just like any other.

I applaud this effort. I've met so many people who are smart as whips and deserve the access to the opportunities and future I had and have.

And that's why I believe the solution starts from the ground up.

gabemart• 9 years ago

This is a cheap, sensational headline and an article that lacks depth and analysis.

At the end of 2006, there were ~160,000 people in prison "institutions" in the state of California[1]. The design capacity of those institutions was ~79,000 people[1], so the occupation was ~204% of the design capacity.

At the end of 2016, there were ~114k people in prison institutions[2], which was ~134% of the design capacity.

Obviously, if prisons are vastly overcrowded, and over time the number of people in prison is reduced substantially, the per-prisoner cost will sharply increase. There are no financial savings on infrastructure because institutional capacity is still vastly exceeded, and the savings in other areas will not be proportional to the overall drop in prison population because the people released early tend to be less expensive to imprison, as they tend to be incarcerated for less serious crimes.

Whatever one's political allegiance, the fact that the prison system in the state of California has been running at a minimum over 130% of design capacity for the last decade is a tremendously serious issue, and it feels trivialising to make a nonsensical comparison to the cost of university tuition, and to present the fact that per-prisoner costs have risen while prisoner numbers have fallen as anything less than blindingly obvious.

A discussion of the prison crisis in California seems completely worthy of Hacker News, but it shouldn't be based on an article like this.

  [1] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad0612.pdf

  [2] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad1612.pdf

sambe• 9 years ago

The article does lack any sort of depth. However, it sounds like you're opposed to the headline itself, which seems to be true, and you haven't refuted it, have you? The article does indeed mention the prison population has declined due to a reduction in overcrowding, but that costs are still rising. The high per-prisoner cost remains a fact, regardless of whether it was cheaper in the past or what caused that.

erbdex• 9 years ago

If you haven't, Netflix's has a documentary called 13TH[1] where a loop hole in the slavery abolishment act was used to mass incarcerate blacks in the USA. As indicated in other threads, USA is inhabited with just 5% of the world's population but runs 25% of all prisons.

[1] https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80091741

voodooranger• 9 years ago

The article forgot to mention that the California prison guards union bankrolls most California politicians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peac...

briandear• 9 years ago

The other way of looking at this story is that Harvard nearly costs $75,000 per year despite being tax exempt with billions of dollars of tax deductible donations/endowment.

kapauldo2• 9 years ago

Seems like it would be smarter to just give them the money and revoke it if they break the law again.

kbart• 9 years ago

I imagine a lot of people would be tempted to commit a crime for $75k then. A better alternative would be to spend at least some of these money on prevention programs to create alternatives for young offenders with the poor background.

chrshawkes2• 9 years ago

Wow, so I can rob a bank than get out and collect 75k, that is an awesome thought.

yjgyhj3• 9 years ago

How about I rob your store Thursday and you mine Friday?

s-brody3• 9 years ago

Why is this on HN?

kwhitefoot3• 9 years ago

Are you implying that it should not be?

s-brody3• 9 years ago

Yes. Am I missing something?

eplanit• 9 years ago

Threads that push the narrative of the "Prison Industrial Complex", and also "Universal Basic Income", are always welcomed on HN.

Bakary• 9 years ago

The amount of votes and comments seem to indicate that it is very well suited to this website.

cubano11• 9 years ago

Do people not realize almost the entire CJS is basically a jobs program for the very people whom directly influence how the laws are made that self-perpetuate their incomes?

That usually works out well, right?

bedhead• 9 years ago

Without having read this, I would imagine healthcare costs among a prison population would be higher by orders of magnitude.

sharemywin2• 9 years ago

Reminds me of the article about million dollar blocks.

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/02/162149431/million-dollar-block...

soup102• 9 years ago

giving criminals rights is a politically toxic because of religious doctrine: the point of jail is not to learn, but to suffer. the idea is if you flagrantly disrespect god(aka the power structure of the society you live in), you must suffer as an example to others.

Its not an ideal system, but there's a certain sensibility to it that stabilizes society. If people saw those that go to jail, come out better persons. They might get the idea that the criminal is a leadership figure, or that they too might become better persons after experimenting with crime.

I'm a strong believer in prison reform, and treating criminals as victims of the difficult choices life offers you. It shouldn't be the accepted standard to put them in a cage and forget they exist, we need to show them the flaws of their moral system: we need to preach to them until they concede the errors of their ways and show meekness.

emodendroket6• 9 years ago

What "religious doctrine" would that be?

narag• 9 years ago

A clue: there are a number of religions that include the concept of hell. Hell is the ultimate retribution, in case society wasn't able to apply it in this world. The underlying idea is that justice is a balance. If someone commits a crime, the reality is unbalanced and equilibrium must be restored punishing the culprit. This idea has been developed by some philosophers, Kant IIRC (but a lot of Kant's work is mostly a repackaging of Christianism).

Edit, just to add some history: justice system was very entangled with religion since forever. Romans were the ones that greatly developed the technical aspects. There was the directum --the righteous thing-- aspect vs the ius, the technical one, the contracts, the seek of solutions and social peace.

anigbrowl17• 9 years ago

Dominionism, which is derived from Calvinism and which enjoys significant popularity in the US. There are some extremely militant and aggressive strains of Christianity out there. Just because you're not familiar with them doesn't mean they only have a few adherents.

lowpro3• 9 years ago

What a silly argument. (Disclaimer: atheist) Your argument doesn't understand what god(s) mean. In what world does anyone use society as an understanding or proxy of god? This argument makes a fallacious assumption as its primary argument then goes on to make other points based off of that incorrect assumption by definition.

And besides that, I think you grossly underestimate the stubbornness of many who go to jail in the first place. Getting a human to be humble is one of the toughest things you can do, and that difficulty is often an inverse of intelligence in my experience (are there studies on this? And I'm not talking about the ultra rich or ultra famous people.)

orasis3• 9 years ago

How is their argument silly? For many, God is an archetypical metaphor for a Daddy that must be feared and obeyed. Trump's election showed that a huge percentage of religious Americans have an authoritarian bent.

anigbrowl17• 9 years ago

Your perspective is uninformed, to say the very least. If you have never been in any religious tradition then you are wholly unqualified to pronounce on its psychological dynamics or its doctrinal interpretation. Multiple religious denominations are based on the notion of predestination, in which one's position on earth is precisely a proxy for the state of one's soul and eternal prospects.

devmunchies3• 9 years ago

The punishment is supposed to be a deterrent for crime.

There are 2 camps: Ones that think of jail as a "correctional facility" (a place to fix broken people), and ones that think of it as punishment, justice for a crime.

No need to bring religion into everything. Punishment for "crimes" existed before christianity, friend.

sgc• 9 years ago

That does not resemble any religious doctrine I know of. The predominant one in the US, Christianity, views punishment on earth as corrective in nature, ie for rehabilitation, and also views prisons as serving the purpose of separating bad actors from society so they cannot damage others. There is no place for retribution, vengeance, etc. American culture seems to be fixated with vendetta, but it is not religious in nature at all, just as it has nothing to do with their love of sports.

anigbrowl17• 9 years ago

You need to learn more. It is warmed-over Calvinism and this strain is widespread in the US thanks to the influence of theologians like the late RJ Rushdoony. Look into the work of Chip Berlet on Christian Dominionism and its influence on politics, as well as Colin Woodard's excellent history book American Nations.

soup102• 9 years ago

At the heart of abrahamic religion is the idea that sinners will suffer God's wrath, in this life or the next. Which in turn gives righteous people the authority to punish sinners, because they are carrying out God's will.

unit91• 9 years ago

I'm struggling to find the religious doctrine you're describing.

Jesus: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

Peter: "Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing."

Paul: "Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone."

anigbrowl17• 9 years ago

Dominionism.

dang• 9 years ago

This subthread crosses into religious flamewar. We definitely don't want religious flamewars on HN, so please neither start nor perpetuate them.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14496283 and marked it off-topic.

outsidetheparty4• 9 years ago

This is what privatization leads to. Hand off a government function to a profit-seeking organization, well, it's gonna seek profits; the taxpayer winds up paying for the thing and also for someone else to make their profits off the thing.

Seriously has there ever been a situation where privatizing an industry led to actually reduced costs, and didn't lead to reduced quality of output? Even if you accept the (IMHO dubious) premise that private industry is necessarily going to be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain has to be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for the taxpayer.

ohthehugemanate• 9 years ago

This is an extremely simplistic way to look at things.

Private organizations do some things much better than public, and vice versa. More often than not it depends on the question you're asking... And there's a lot of contextualization needed in the answer.

How's your electrical infrastructure, or your water infrastructure doing? They're supplied by private industry. How's your religious institution, your school bus, your local day care? What about public-private partnerships, like public transit? Personally, I will take the mixed market universal health care systems of France and Germany, over the 100% public Canadian waiting list system... but that depends on your criteria for success.

Volumes are written about each one of these cases, how to evaluate "success", what combinations of structures work well in what social contexts, etc. Other countries have private companies involved in prisons, and get great results... But their markets are different, their contract terms are different, the avenues of influence for legislation are different, their bidding processes are different, and their cultures are different. To reduce it to "privatization always raises costs and reduces quality of output" is ridiculous.

outsidetheparty4• 9 years ago

Private organizations do some things much better than public, and vice versa.

That is certainly a true statement, and I'm of course by no means suggesting that privately-supplied functions such as "day care" or "religious institutions" should be government-run.

I'm reacting primarily to the current American administration's de facto stance of "small government good, big government bad," which I feel is just as simplistic as the straw-man version of my question you constructed. Privatization efforts have been proposed (or have long since been carried out -- this tendency long predates Trump) for the prison system, the education system, air traffic control, even the military itself through use of mercenary companies like whatever Blackwater's name is now. (There's certainly room for reasoned disagreement about which functions a government ought to serve compared to private industry, but surely "military and jails" belong under the government umbrella?)

In every case I'm aware of, the justification has been that it will reduce costs due to increased efficiency, yet the end results have been increased costs and reduced quality of service. Maybe Americans are just bad at privatization, but that was a genuine question: has there been a case where privatizing a function traditionally served by the government has improved it? The case under discussion here, the american prison system, certainly hasn't.

My main point was this:

Even if you accept the premise that private industry is necessarily going to be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain has to be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for the taxpayer.

...which seems inarguable, yet is rarely if ever addressed by proponents of privatization.

crimsonalucard• 9 years ago

This seems to be a perverted trend in America. Medical bills, tuition and all fees in general bloated to the point where it doesn't make sense. Is this some sort of anthropological/economic phenomenon? Somebody should get to the bottom of this and write a book.

irpapakons• 9 years ago

At more than $200 a night you can spend a whole year at a spa. What do the prisoners get for that money? The daily cost for food seems to be about $2 and they live in overcrowded cells. Sounds like a very profitable business for someone.

fivestar2• 9 years ago

We're going to end up like China--executing people for most serious crimes. We only spend the money on prisoners in the US because we have the luxury of doing so. If (when?) we falter, we're right back to frontier style justice. It can't be any other way--letting dangerous criminals out just creates more chaos.

And don't lecture me about all the "non-violent" drug offenders--I don't think any of them really exist. They're all shitbags who got jammed up for whatever charges the cops could get them on. For every bleeding heart story, I'll show you 10 that justly deserve to be behind bars.

EternalData• 9 years ago

Criminal justice in the United States borrows a lot more from the Scarlet Letter than rational policy.

jaggi15• 9 years ago

Government runs something inefficiently. That is a big news! Nah. It is known.

This is prison industrial complex at play fueled by insecurities of average American.

1024core2• 9 years ago

I think the Prison Industry should be judged by their recidivism rate. The Prison Guards union in Cali is very, very strong (they were behind the '3 strikes' law, ensuring a lifetime of "clients"). Their pay and benefits should be tied to the recidivism rate.

Prisons should not be training grounds for future criminals, but they are today.

Also: prisons should be shuffled periodically, mixing up the population. That'll prevent the formation of criminal gangs inside. Outside, they'll be living in a diverse, mixed environment anyways; might as well get them started on that inside.

linkregister• 9 years ago

Shuffling prisoners around breaks up the family ties they have on the outside; visitors have a harder time if they have to travel further. This increases the likelihood prisoners will offend again.

1024core2• 9 years ago

I meant, shuffle them around within the prison, so they're forced to interact more with other groups.

nautilus12• 9 years ago

Wait. Im missing something, if there is one employee per every 2 inmates that means each employee earns in the range of Min Wage to 152,000. How much of this is driven by employee salary and how much by administrative and over head costs? Is this just because the cost of living in california is so high they have to pay their guards six digits and above?

blfr• 9 years ago

Fittingly, it's also a better career move to become a prison guard than attend Harvard:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704132204576285...

notadoc• 9 years ago

Seems like a colossal waste of limited resources and tax revenue.

Maybe every non-violent criminal should be put on house arrest with an ankle bracelet instead? Then they can work off a fine, do community service, etc?

dragonwriter2• 9 years ago

Headline is an outright clickbait lie contradicted by the lead sentence; it doesn't cost more than the all-in annual cost of Harvard, but more than tuition.

Not that the comparison is particularly meaningful in any case, since it's not like sending convicts to Harvard instead is an available alternative.

aarongolliver• 9 years ago

It says it costs "2,000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses to attend Harvard." so I have no idea what you're on about.

bawana• 9 years ago

is the need for prison simply the side effect of a population density that is too high? But that is a different topic. The issue is the cost of incarceration and how a once noble idea (eliminating bad behavior instead of eliminating the owner) has been 'corporatized'. It seems a fundamental rhythm of human activity is to express the goodness in us with a new idea. The evil in us then tries to maximize profit and efficiency resulting in a loss function that destroys initially unrecognized but important parameters of humanity.

blorsh• 9 years ago

That is just California being California.

Other states are cheaper. If you really wanted to be cheap, you could outsource to a foreign country. You could fly people to the other side of the world and still save money.

sgarrity• 9 years ago

How much would Harvard cost if you had to keep students from escaping?

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

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