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Drones Cost $28,000 Per Arrest, On Average

Posted by Soulskill on from the tag-and-release-even-more-expensive dept.

mpicpp sends this report from CNN: They are sleek, mostly silent converted weapons of war: Drones used by the Border Patrol to scan the skies in the empty deserts of the Southwest to spot illegal immigrants and then, if things work out, have agents arrest them. That's the idea, and the agents who use them say the drones give them a vantage point they never had before. Flying at 18,000 feet, the drones view the landscape below, lock onto potential suspects crossing the Arizona desert, and agents on the ground move into make the arrests. But it's outrageously expensive: $28,000 for a single arrest.

6 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. Is that really a lot? by Mal-2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's assume for a moment that they're serious about deporting people.

    What's the cost if they get through, and have to be tracked down by traditional methods? What's the cost of putting more people there to achieve the same level of effectiveness? What's the cost of flying conventional aircraft to do the job?

    When pitted against those methods by comparison, $28,000 might actually not be all that bad.

    --
    How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
    1. Re:Is that really a lot? by space_jake · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or just have them come here, work, and pay taxes.

    2. Re:Is that really a lot? by userw014 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The math for calculating this cost is deceptively simple-minded - and the article doesn't offer any way to compare it with other methods.

      A (very) brief search for the US Border Patrol budget and apprehensions found these:

      • http://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BP%20Total%20Apps%2C%20Mexico%2C%20OTM%20FY2000-FY2014_0.pdf
      • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Customs_and_Border_Protection

      or FY2014 budget of $13.6 Billion and 486,651 apprehensions.

      That gives an average cost of $27946/apprehension for the entire organization. My (very, very) simple minded calculation is remarkably similar to the Office of Inspector General's figures for just the drone program. If anything, it shows that just introducing drones doesn't change the cost-per-apprehension of the Border Patrol. A more important question would be whether cost-per-apprehension is even a valid metric for the Border Patrol.

    3. Re:Is that really a lot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      "The purpose of the minimum wage was to stabilize the post-depression economy and protect the workers in the labor force. The minimum wage was designed to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well-being of employees." - actually, yea, that was the logic behind its creation.

  2. Scanning the skies? by joelgrimes · · Score: 5, Funny

    scan the skies in the empty deserts of the Southwest to spot illegal immigrants

    Hey guys, I think I see the problem.

    --
    Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
  3. If we are going to do numbers that way..... by kosh271 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Should we start analyzing the US military's cost per kill of enemy combatants last year?