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At $75,560, Housing a Prisoner in California Now Costs More Than a Year at Harvard (latimes.com)
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.
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.
What's beer gov?
#DeleteFacebook
If only we didn't turn everything that some legislator doesn't like into felonies...
Or California could stop trying to make prisons into luxury apartments that also provide top notch health care services. But noooo, that's not politically correct, and California can't do that.
goes to education. Most of the money spent at a private prison goes to the people running the prison. Our priorities are just fine, provided you run a private prison and/or own stock in one.
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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.
No place on the planet does that.
If college is free, it has _strict_ academic standards to get and stay in.
And that makes complete sense, why should we send disruptive and/or unengaged students to college? Waste of time and money.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And attract new customers too!
While we pay too much to keep people in prison. (And spiteful people seem to want to keep them there.) The changes in California are not unreasonable. They show a 6% yearly increase. Given that the prison population is shrinking, it's not surprising that the fixed costs that are built into the system are going to give a number that is higher than inflation, which is about 2% over that timespan.
Chris Mesterharm
The solution has already been demonstrated very well, it's called restorative justice.
When I found out the King County budget was exploding, it turned out a lot of that was for enforcement, trials, juries, and prison for people who were using MJ.
We slashed our budget by making MJ arrests the lowest enforcement priority in Seattle and Tacoma.
Then we legalized MJ and MMJ statewide.
California will soon do this as well.
It's a "crime" that is almost entirely enforced on black and brown folks even though most users and dealers are actually white.
And then they have prison records, so they can't work.
By pardoning everyone and removing these "convictions" from their records, we increase the GDP and get more people working and paying taxes.
Same for California. Same for Canada.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The price for each inmate has doubled since 2005
Is this one of those cases where the budget was fixed, and the number of inmates decreased, thereby making it look like the price of keeping an inmate increased? The summary itself says that the inmate population decreased by one-quarter, but at the same time the budget is the highest ever.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
some people are in for the free doctors
Recidivism rates have not improved. So may of those released are likely to end up back in prison. Without addressing the underlying cause we shouldn't expect any change.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Prison guards' Union, for some weird reason, wields great power in California state legislature and the politicians generally just give them whatever they want.
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
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.
You assume that people who are in prison would be "unengaged" or "disruptive". If you solve whatever social or behavioral or economic problem that caused them to commit felonies then I'd argue you are part of the way there to education, graduation and meaningful employment. A very big "if" of course.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
No place on the planet does that.
If you mean planet earth, you are wrong. Facepalm.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
For profit prisons. The shareholders' answer.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Surely there must already be some community college in California that is like being in prison?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Wow putting 1 in 40 people in prison in the US isn't working out well?
Total population of California: 40 million. Prison population of California: 130K. You might want to revise your x-in-y numbers.
The reason they committed crimes is probably because they had ambition to do better for themselves than UBI can provide. Isn't one purpose of UBI to encourage people to go out and make more money doing whatever they have ambition to do?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
A fraction of the space in a bare prison cell in an aging-and-already-paid-for prison cell + three basic mass-produced meals per day do NOT cost over $70K per year.
Here's what's REALLY happening:
Democrat governor Jerry "moonbeam" Brown and the Democrat super-majority legislature are pouring vast sums of cash into all the California agencies with unionized employees (whose unions pour cash into Democrat campaigns). The CA prison guards union is a vital element of the Democrat coalition here, right up there with the CalTrans wokers and right behind the teachers. We have prison guards who retire on $400K pensions.
That university seems to generate a lot of criminals anyway, what's a few more?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That of course assumes that it is something solvable. Obviously not everyone in prison in some kind of hopeless case with no hope of redemption. That some people get out and turn their lives around disproves that quite easily, but there are some people who clearly can't function in society or be let out. The obvious examples like Charles Manson or serial rapists probably aren't "curable" by modern means. If it were that easy, we'd have already figured out how to cure things like ADD or schizophrenia.
The real question is where is the line drawn. We know that there's a group that can come out of prison and integrate into society without further problem and we know there's another group on the other side that are beyond hope and can't ever come out. But most people don't clearly fall into either group and we don't have a good way to quickly and accurate categorize them or a surefire way of ensuring that those we think can be helped can be helped such that there's no or almost no recidivism.
Or Yale?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Yes. They could have "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" sales. People would be breaking down the doors to get in at such a bargain price.
The top of the pay scale isn't even half of what you claim.
Earlier this year four guards were injured in separate assaults. One guy got his face slashed in San Quentin.
You want that job for $45,000 a year living in the Bay Area?
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/career_opportunities/por/pay.html
Pay and Benefits
Correctional Officer/Youth Correctional Officer
Range A = $3,050 (During Academy)
Range J = $3,774 (After Academy)
Range K = $6,389 (Top of Pay Scale)
Youth Correctional Counselor
Range A = $3,050 (During Academy)
Range J = $4,142 (After Academy)
Range K = $6,743 (Top of pay scale)
Name a place that has unlimited college for failing students?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I live in California and been listening to talk radio jockeys squawk about this for some time. Though MUCH of the cost goes to CalPERS (see state employee union) a large portion is spent on inmate healthcare which due to constant litigation examples being california prisons paying for sex reassignment surgery etc. the problem is inmates know to litigate the system to death, and instead of fighting the prison system rolls over and rolls over and rolls over. This is why California as a whole is so damn expensive, the state is trying to save anyone with complete irresponsibility when it comes to the bill
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/us/california-is-first-to-pay-for-prisoners-sex-reassignment-surgery.html?_r=0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Plata
https://www.calpers.ca.gov/
Isn't California in the middle of a multi-year effort to reduce the size of its prison population? And didn't they just pass a proposition to increase the number of non-violent offenders given parole?
Simple thought experiment. Suppose you had facilities for a million prisoners, and they were totally full. Then you reduce the number of prisoners to just one, maintaining the capacity to handle a million inmates. What would happen to your total prison spending? What would happen to your per inmate spending?
It seems pretty obvious to me that your total prison spending would drop, but your per-prisoner cost would be astronomical.
PPC = M + TFC/n
where:
PPC -- per prisoner cost
M -- marginal expenses for each prisoner (food, clothing, etc.)
TFC -- total fixed costs for the system (building maintenance, administrataion)
n -- number inmates in the system.
So right off the bat the taxpayers are paying less on prisons, but you can't instantaneously make all that excess capacity disappear. You'd expect a short term spike in per prisoner spending until you could start closing parts of each prison, or maybe even entire prisons.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There are two summer research articles, both from the MTBI at Arizona, that come to mind:
Prison Reform Programs, and their Impact on Recidivism, and Minimizing recidivism by optimizing profit: a theoretical case study of incentivized reform in a Louisiana prison.
I'm aware the keyword here is 'theoretical', and there's a chance that the equations brought out by the research may have to be updated for other unseen problems, but I can't help but wonder if any of these articles have been put to good use.
I don't want to discuss the morals of prison labor, but as long as the constitution explicitly allow penal labor, why not make the best use of it? From little I know from penal labor system in US, it seems most of the benefits from penal labor goes to private business who gets labor contract below market. Can the system be overhauled to pay the prisoners near market pay? It seems there's benefit on both sides. The prison system can alleviate the cost of running the system, and the prisoners can have opportunity to learn trade and a chance to leave prison with some savings by allowing them a percentage of their pay. I don't have much knowledge about penal labor or even prison system in general, but it seems like it should be feasible at least.
I mean unlimited FREE college, obviously.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Name a place that has unlimited college for failing students?
Austria, Greece, Denmark, Sweden, Argentina, Uruguay, Finland, Germany... those are the ones I know, the attending is free the study materials not always, so if you don't progress in your career you will be losing money and time. Most universities and careers have some kind of admision test but usually it's only the first two years that are overcrowded.
This comparison is stupid.
Contrary to popular belief: Harvard's true tuition is based on your family's income/assets, it's not fixed like standard schools. I get that the "list price" is $69K, but that's not the "cost" if your family isn't earning ~$250K/year. Harvard has "need-based" scholarship programs that can reduce the true cost to zero or near zero. The point is, if your academics can get you into Harvard College, they don't want you to worry about the price, they want you to attend. Oh, and they disallow student loans. https://college.harvard.edu/fi...
From the Harvard site (linked): "In fact, approximately 70 percent of our students receive some form of aid, and about 60 percent receive need–based scholarships and pay an average of $12,000 per year. Twenty percent of parents pay nothing. No loans required."
Here's a calculator: https://college.harvard.edu/fi...
In other words, the "genius" who made this comparison isn't Harvard material - and is trying to say "it's expensive to house our inmates" by assuming Harvard is expensive. The truth is, it's not.
If s/he had done some research, s/he could should have said "Cost of a Porsche Boxster S", or something else that is actually "expensive" instead of making the poor people think they've got no chance of affording Harvard if they can get in.
Sloppy journalism.
-SM
Go Crimson!
I know for a fact that it isn't true for Germany. Don't make grades in HS, no college. Don't make grades for one semester in college, find yourself bouncing down the stairs, on your ass. Germany needs ditch diggers too.
Paying for permastudents to party is far beyond reasonable.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Again, name one.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I realize tat the snowflakes are going to call me a Trump fascist, but maybe it is time that these prisoners only get basic cable and not all of the premium channels.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Many of the people imprisoned in the US are there for nonviolent drug charges. Pile of dead bodies, my ass.
Of course, it doesn't cost anything like $75 grand to keep a prisoner locked up and fed for a year. This is just a case of a $600 hammer, and the scam here is the money being paid into bureaucrat's salaries, pension padding, etc.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Better luck next reincarnation. Thanks for playing!
What do you say to someone who has been huffing toluene for a decade? They're done.
On another vein: In the world of finite seats *, educating one person has an opportunity cost of not educating another, possibly more than one...
Big part of why so much of college's population is kids. The oldsters students are there as sorta-teachers, like yeast in dough. The fact is that 'years of use' has a lot to do with how 'socially useful' education is, so younger is better. Arguing that a 45 year old, released felon, is the best use of a university seat isn't going to be easy.
Also in the picture: For profit schools with 'infinite seats', that will take anyone. Buyer beware.
* when I was in college, most classes had empty seats. But there was always a bunch of underclassmen courses that filled the fucking room, multiple times (people sat on the stairs, first couple of classes, but the class was half empty by the end) at the start of each semester. Limited the student supply to downstream classes. Teacher effort also counts, you just can't stuff extra kids into programs for free. Then again, average university professor effort is not 100%, but changing that?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Or California could stop trying to make prisons into luxury apartments that also provide top notch health care services. But noooo, that's not politically correct, and California can't do that.
That budget could do as you say (in the ridiculous situation that doesn't exist where it's desired) but it's not what is happening. It's going in profit. The taxpayers are being scammed by the prison owners.
and solidarity. While the rest of the electorate is worried their guns'll get taken away or that their wife/daughter might someday need an abortion to survive they vote one and only one way. It's the same reason folks over 65 are powerful. So long as you don't fuck with their medicare you can set fire to the rest of the world.
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"where it's desired" should be "even if it was desired".
The reality of prisons not being your ridiculous suggestion of luxury penthouses should show how utterly stupid the post blaming the "product" and not the supplier was anyway.
The prisons are just being used as a way to overcharge the taxpayer.
Make a law that you can only donate to a candidate directly and only if you can personally vote for them. Then limit the amount you can donate to something along the lines of $500 dollars or less. Punish violations by banning any and all people from holding public office. Then require anyone who holds an office above dog catcher to retire from public life after their term is served. Problem solved.
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Well, we can expect them to reoffend sooner than usual. See? That's change!
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
With the helmet so heavy that it can kill people who eject (and a long list of other things) I'm not so sure about that.
I suppose MBAs come from college as well.
You didn't even read the question you quoted and responded to. I'm not so sure I'd stand behind the quality of your education.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
But most people don't clearly fall into either group and we don't have a good way to quickly and accurate categorize them or a surefire way of ensuring that those we think can be helped can be helped such that there's no or almost no recidivism.
We don't care. We set minimum mandatory sentences and take away the ability for judges to actually use discretion. The prisons know who the at risk prisoners are and who aren't. The low risk prisoners are the ones working in the cafeteria, workshops, etc... The prisons don't have the ability to release them early nor do they have an incentive as these low risk prisoners are cheap and safe to house.
Well, the base assumption is that threatening people enough and punishing them makes them into good people. This is a fundamentalist religious idea. It does not work at all in actual reality, but fundamentalists are incapable of understanding cause-effect relationships or that their ideas and methods may not work.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I've spend a lot of time reading religious material. Their attitude to prison is that all prisoners are evil vile people and the scum of the earth, an the only possible hope for their reform is to find salvation in Jesus and be cleaned of their sins. Therefore all money spent on prisoner education and rehabilitation is wasted, because only Jesus can make someone into a good person.
Their main concerns are 1. Making sure prisons have plenty of chaplains who can convert people. 2. Protecting the religious freedom of the chaplains to preach without government control, especially if they want to preach about how evil homosexuals are. 3. Making sure that the filthy heathen Muslims don't get their own preachers in to turn prisoners into terrorists.
In short: They do not believe in rehabilitation, except via conversion.
Also note that, with the exception of people who convert while in prison, they regard prisons as having exactly zero Christian population: No true Christian would ever end up in prison, and anyone who claims to be a Christian but still ends up in prison is simply lying about their faith.
Meh. Airforce pilots are expendable now that we have relatively cheap drones controlled from comfortable offices in the US.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
Basically every european country has free colleges/universities.
And ofc you need to have the appropriated high school degree (Abitur) to get accepted, that is a no brainer.
And you likely knew that, so about what do you want to argue?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Well F-35's are being produced and sold and not destroyed. So it's not a real broken window fallacy.
We could argue that keeping schools open just to give teachers a job is equivalent to the broken window.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I think that is probably a pretty common issue. I know it is similar where I am. At one point they were part of my union, which was silly because every time there was a strike vote (no matter what it was) they would vote 99.9% to go on strike. They knew that they would all be for the most part classified as essential workers and not be allowed to strike anyway. Meaning all the rest of us would have to go out to win them them benefits. They are still in a related union, but at least don't vote with us anymore. There was a recent vote like a year or so ago, and management was going to start installing management types from other business areas as prison guards (or that was the threat). I can only imagine how disastrous that would have been (though I think some of us were secretly hoping some of our management might have to do it and see what "happens"). At any rate, of course that didn't happen and they got what they want, which is what they always do. Which is why it is so expensive and why they all have such high salaries. That isn't to say they don't have some legitimate grievances (like safety, and numbers, and facilities, etc...), but salary isn't really one of them. Don't get me wrong, not an easy or fun job, with danger and stress, they should be compensated fairly... that said the pendulum swings. I've always been a bit critical of industries that have "unions" but who more less legally can't strike, seems a bit silly (Prison guards, Police, Fire, Nurses, doctors, teachers to a certain extent politically as parents can deal with children)... It is kind of a slap in the face to other unions struggling to get that 0.5, 1 or 2% inflationary increase when some of these other are getting unsustainable 6 and 8% increases year over year. At any rate it is mostly political cowardice, most would pass the buck to the next guy and them blame them for not being able to balance the budget.
Such is the price of mandatory-minimum vengeance policies, paid out to the private sector.
Take away some of their "stuff" Cut out cable, internet, exercise equipment, and what other crap they get. Put the able bodied ones on chain gangs out cleaning up the roadways, cutting the weeds. Make prison more like the movie "Cool Hand Luke" and maybe people would be less inclined to break the law. A lot of prisoners get "cleaned up" beefed up in prison, get out, commit more crimes, strung out on dope go back in, clean up again, and repeat the process. Make it where they DON'T want to go to prison, maybe, just maybe a few of them will stay out of trouble.
What generation did we fail? Not the ones whining right now, they are just 'at that age' where they realize the world is a messy place. The dumb ones adopt dumb philosophies (socialism/communism/anarcho syndicalism) out of denial.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Subject germane.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
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BT
I spend less than $6000 per year for rent, utilities, and food. So for the cost of one year in prison I could live for 12 years without working. I wonder how many of those criminals would be in jail if we had some sort of minimum basic income in the US. Not that I am claiming such a system is viable, but it sounds like in the case of the prisoners it would be much cheaper.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Indeed. These people are completely messed up and do not know it. Probably the only way to exceed "deeply stupid" is "deeply religious".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I thought the left didn't like stereotypes...oh, the irony.
Just another day in Paradise
And so many quality-of-life and medical inventions are a result of our military research.
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or believe what you said. So, just for starters, there's radar, duct tape, jet engines, and oh yeah...the Internet.
Just another day in Paradise
It's quite a different education, though!