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At $75,560, Housing a Prisoner in California Now Costs More Than a Year at Harvard (latimes.com)

Posted by msmash on from the priorities dept.

The cost of imprisoning each of California's 130,000 inmates is expected to reach a record $75,560 in the next year, the AP reported. From the article: That's enough to cover the annual cost of attending Harvard University and still have plenty left over for pizza and beer Gov. Jerry Brown's spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1 includes a record $11.4 billion for the corrections department while also predicting that there will be 11,500 fewer inmates in four years (alternative source) because voters in November approved earlier releases for many inmates. 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. The result is a per-inmate cost that is the nation's highest -- and $2,000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses to attend Harvard. Since 2015, California's per-inmate costs have surged nearly $10,000, or about 13%. New York is a distant second in overall costs at about $69,000.

18 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. we'll pay for prison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We'll pay to put people in prison, yet we won't pay to educate people. Maybe it's just me, but perhaps, just perhaps this nation has its priorities backwards.

    1. Re:we'll pay for prison by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Getting tough is easier than getting smart when it comes to getting votes.

    2. Re:we'll pay for prison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      This is one trillion five hundred billion dollars.

      Yet the US spends some $600 billion on the largest jobs program in the world, the United States Armed Forces. What do we have for a return on our investment on that? Not much. At least you go and spend money on giving your populace a decent education, they have a chance to compete in the world. Instead we'd rather send them off to prison, to be cannon fodder in some third world shithole or otherwise get them hooked to opioids.

      Great plan we've got here.

      Fuck You.

      Fuck you too.

    3. Re:we'll pay for prison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It also gets you sweet lobbying kickbacks from the private prison system. A win-win, except for the people getting fucked over by said system, the taxpayers funding the whole thing, and society in general when people come out more messed up than when they went in.

    4. Re:we'll pay for prison by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yet the US spends some $600 billion on the largest jobs program in the world, the United States Armed Forces. What do we have for a return on our investment on that?

      Professionally trained killers who are willing to give up their lives to protect you from the rest of the world.

    5. Re:we'll pay for prison by cheesybagel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A lot of people in US jails are in for drug related offenses. The US has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world and there is no excuse for that.

    6. Re:we'll pay for prison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Professionally trained killers who are willing to give up their lives to protect you from the rest of the world.

      The way things have gone lately, it's more like the rest of the world needs protected from our professional trained killers. Some perspective for you. Then we wonder why the rest of the world hates the US? Maybe if we stopped sending troops all over the fucking place to kill people who never did a damn thing to anyone in the US.

      Every bomb we drop somewhere in the world..another angry terrorist is created.

      Tell me, are we actually any safer than we were 25 years ago?
      We're not? What do you mean all of those billions of dollars spent in Afghanistan and Iraq accomplished nothing? Nevermind the the thousands of American soldiers who died for pretty much nothing. They weren't defending our freedom, they were defending special interests.

      Captcha: hoodwinked

    7. Re:we'll pay for prison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A 1978 documentary, href="http://amzn.to/2sAK1ft">Scared Straight!, had a group of juvenile delinquents meet harden convicts who scared the crap out of them to convince that a life of crime doesn't pay. Such an experience for the graduating class of Harvard might convince future Wall Street traders and politicians to be more ethical in their dealings.

      Why? They are not at any measurable risk of going to prison - prison is for the poor or middle class.

    8. Re: we'll pay for prison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yep. But the customer is us. Base fees on recidivism.

    9. Re:we'll pay for prison by HornWumpus · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Democrats run all the places you wouldn't go. All of them and have run them for decades.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    10. Re:we'll pay for prison by queazocotal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If more harvard students went to prison, on the other hand, you can guarantee treatment of prisoners would improve.

    11. Re:we'll pay for prison by queazocotal · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Or pleading up from actually being innocent.

    12. Re:we'll pay for prison by Gilgaron · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think the military is currently used as a 'right-wing friendly' make-work program. You have the poor employed and trained as soldiers, the middle class as scientists and engineers to make the equipment, and the upper class running the industrial complex. Maybe a CCC style program could replace it but I'm not sure that simply cutting the military budget in half would necessarily solve more problems than it would cause with how things stand.

  2. Re:If only all of us would stop committing felonie by PoopJuggler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If all of us would stop electing officials who don't mind paying $1.5 trillion for F35s when maybe we could make college free for everyone.

  3. We're doing it wrong news at 11 by acrimonious+howard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The solution has already been demonstrated very well, it's called restorative justice.

  4. Prison guards make around $150k a year in Calif. by Spy+Handler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Prison guards' Union, for some weird reason, wields great power in California state legislature and the politicians generally just give them whatever they want.

  5. Re:If only all of us would stop committing felonie by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    College educated people had to be hired to design the F-35. So it's not a total waste. Arms industry represents about 2% of the nation's GDP and about 10% of the US's manufacturing output.

    Obviously being the world leader in death and destruction doesn't sit well with some of us. But it is extremely profitable.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  6. Prisons are not about protecting society. by Lumpy · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Prisons are a business, Anyone thinking otherwise is incredibly uneducated on how the USA does things in the legal system.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.