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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.
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.
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! --
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
That's nice. How about looking at some real world data:
http://gawker.com/5797381/spoi...
"One sergeant with a base salary of $81,683 collected $114,334 in overtime and $8,648 in bonuses last year, and he's not even the highest paid."
$81k base + $114k overtime + $8k bonus = $203k
Oh and not every prison guard lives in Bay area.
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!