34 ms·

If Prisoners Ran Prisons

265 points by iamjeff 10y ago

wccrawford 10y ago
I'm all for prison reform, but other than the bits where officers do demeaning things to the prisoners, this really just becomes a list of things that prisoners feel would make their lives more comfortable. Well yeah, no shit. Of course they want it better in there. If they got all this, they'd eventually be complaining that they should have computers and playstations. Prison isn't supposed to be torture (physically or mentally) but it's also not supposed to be better than poor people have it. If poor people can't be taken care of to the point they have these things (and I think they should!) then I don't think starting with the prisons is the right way to go.
- chappi42 10y ago
  But one could start with the small things: "yelled at...". Totally unnecessary imho. Why do this?
- throwawaycanada 10y ago
  I don't think poor people are regularly locked in cages with HIV positive serial rapists.
  - Avshalom 10y ago
    Right as "fucked" as the poor can be in this country prisoners have even less agency and are even more vulnerable to the abuses of the system they get thrown into.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > If poor people can't be taken care of to the point they have these things (and I think they should!) then I don't think starting with the prisons is the right way to go. If you really care about this, then you should advocate that poor people don't produce children anymore so that at least "born poor", that is a common cause of poverty, is mostly eliminated.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    >then you should advocate that poor people don't produce children anymore so that at least "born poor" // That's a false conclusion. You could heavily tax the rich to ensure everyone [who had a child] had sufficient to live on and so no one would be "poor" (you'd have poorer, but not poor per se). There are probably further additional possible ways that the problem could be solved and hence further possible outcomes that the parent could advocate and maintain consistent logic.
- williadc 10y ago
  You're correct that most of these are asking for prison to be a more tolerable place to live. Making prison a rough experience should encourage inmates to avoid crimes which will send them back. The article's author contends that the current conditions in the prison where he serves his time re-enforce criminal behavior and empowers "gang recruiters, extortion, and other threats" by depriving prisoners. He has the advantage of seeing what happens each day, but has a sample-size issue in that he's only experienced a small number of prisons. I would be interested in seeing his proposals tested in a controlled studies. None of them seems difficult or expensive to implement.
  - dom0 10y ago
    > Making prison a rough experience should encourage inmates to avoid crimes which will send them back. RoW actually shows that this basic approach does not work at all.
mmagin 10y ago
One of the few charities (that I'm aware of) in this area: http://justdetention.org/ http://justdetention.org/
nknwn 10y ago
In having served almost 10 years in prison for drugs. I can say that medium and maximum security prisons are often a breeding ground for killers, and dangerous people. Young kids who have done something incredibly stupid usually end up in these places. They are then immediately put in a situation to fuck or fight. This behavior will often escalate to extreme violence or to be broken psychologically, then owned by other inmates, bought and sold like property. Can that kind of behavior be unlearned? I doubt it... I would argue that at best, people can only learn to do something better, but always lurking in the background. This is only one of many of the bizarre insanities of prison life. I personally don't disagree with the idea of punishment or prison. I would however say that prisons are extremely dysfunctional.
- throwawaycanada 10y ago
  As an outsider I always just assumed those who ran prisons and designed them wanted them to be set up that way.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    On the other hand I always assumed it's due to short-term thinking and incentives misalignment. Incarceration is a quick way to quarantine criminals and fill the need for justice of the offended. A person who ends up in prison (especially the high-security one) is likely to be away for many, many years - at which point what happens when they're released is someone else's problem. Humans are good at dealing with distant consequences in the abstract, but extremely poor at it in practice. So prisons are what they are by default. Of course there are other issues at play too. For instance, a prison can't be too nice, lest it turns into a free vocational school and people will find committing crimes and getting caught to be an excellent way to get education. Or another example - you can't really make prisoners do useful work for the society (as opposed to just rotting in their cells), because it disrupts the market economy and becomes a powerful force for administrators to threaten their local communities ("do X, or else I unleash my 300+ strong force of unpaid workers and drive you out of market"). The more I think about prisons, the more I see it's a very convoluted issue, and there isn't any obvious, simple solution.
_audakel 10y ago
so sad. im glad that in the age of the internet stories like this can come out and reach many people. I just hope that the next generation of leaders who grew up on the internet exposed to many differing ideas will have the courage/determination to find real solustions fix problems like this.
chappi42 10y ago
Well, nothing to do with hackers, but if this > Immediately they are yelled at by officers to strip naked, get ‘nuts to butts,’ and after being searched they are kept naked for several minutes until they are issued some boxers... is true. Boah, how can everybody yell at the 'bad behaviour' of Trump and Clinton and look away here?
- dimino 10y ago
  I think we all pretty much know inmates are treated poorly, and while it is most certainly a tragedy, we are a) unable to meaningfully change their situations in the short or medium term and b) have more directly effecting issues that take priority. Why is it that all the successful companies in the private prison industry are terrible for the inmates? The client is the state, and the state doesn't care about costs associated with caring for inmates, right? Is there any way to turn that on its head? To... uh, "disrupt" some small part of this?
- smcl 10y ago
  I agree, it's pretty sick. I can see how this sort of behaviour can become normalised, hard to remove and in some cases part of what the public expect from the prison experience. Many people see prison as a place to be punished, so it's easy for them to rationalise any sort of demeaning or dehumanising treatment as part of the package - "well he/she should've thought about that before they broke the law..." etc In addition if you're a politician you're not going to win votes by campaigning for better conditions in prisons, now matter how you spin it.
  - azernik 10y ago
    > In addition if you're a politician you're not going to win votes by campaigning for better conditions in prisons, now matter how you spin it. This is the root cause, and the political/policy effects are a symptom. There are places where this kind of treatment would be considered a scandal, but American culture doesn't agree.
  - chappi42 10y ago
    Yes, but how is an inmate supposed to become 'better' in future if he (I assume this only happens to men) is treated this respectless? Maybe you are right with winning votes. But on the other hand I perceive the americans as quite human. And if voters (and politicians) want to reduce the likelyhood of inmates to slide back I think the conditions must be improved (if they really should be that bad - I somehow cannot believe this report, completly unthinkable in Europe (maybe we exagerate a bit towards the other end, don't know)
perfmode 10y ago
If you find this topic interesting, I would recommend that you check out the documentary "13th" on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741 https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741
Barraketh 10y ago
I wonder why there are no private non-profit prisons. There are many states that allow private prisons. There have been multiple articles about how awful these prisons are. Why not try to open a non-profit prison where gov't funds are supplemented with donations and focusing on rehabilitation and humane living conditions. Then we both improve the lives of some inmates, and can more effectively compare outcomes.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Best idea I've seen on the thread. There's corruption to overcome but the non-profit could similarly bribe the politicians. It's worth someone trying.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Because the amount available per prisioner per day is so low that a non-profit prison could not do much better. It is not like the for-profit prisions are running on profit margins of 50%.
  - steveax 10y ago
    ~12.5% margin for CCA in 2015 [1]. I suspect that $227M could manage to pay for bringing some fresh produce into the commissary. Edit: not to mention the $890K they spent on lobbying. [1]: http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/11/117983/2015%20Annual%20Letter%20to%20Shareholders%20-%20Final.pdf http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/11/117983/201...
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      This is not a great margin given the capital requirements and political risks. It would be hard for a new non-profit to get to their efficiency without scale and even if you did it would not free up anywhere near the resources required to make major changes in prisoner treatment. The basic problem is still the tiny amount spent per prisoner on anything other than keeping them locked up. We need to spend more if we want them to not just be heading straight back to jail.
CalChris 10y ago
Cost of prison per prisoner per year: $168,000 http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/nyregion/citys-annual-cost-per-inmate-is-nearly-168000-study-says.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/nyregion/citys-annual-c... Average in the US: $31,000 https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-what-incarceration-costs-taxpayers https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-what-... This isn't about justice. It's about prison guard jobs. It's about welfare.
- StanislavPetrov 10y ago
  It's not just about welfare, its also about political power. For example, New York houses tens of thousands of prisoners from New York City in various upstate prison towns. The population of these prisoners is counted towards the populations of these upstate towns, even though the prisoners cannot vote and aren't from that area. For purposes of gerrymandering, funding, and anything else related to population these prisoners are literally political ammunition. This added clout puts representatives in the statehouse that exist only to flood the prisons with more prisoners, completely beholden to prison guard unions and other prison-related industries. They spend their time blocking any sort of logical criminal reform, marijuana legalization, or anything else that would slow the steady stream of prisoners. Its a corrupt system to the core. http://www.demos.org/publication/census-count-and-prisoners-problem-solutions-and-what-census-can-do http://www.demos.org/publication/census-count-and-prisoners-...
  - mchannon 10y ago
    Prison gerrymandering has been reformed in a few places, particularly New York. Due to reforms passed in 2010, prisoners are now counted toward their home districts. California has likewise passed a law to discontinue the process there by 2020. For much of the rest of the country, this is still a problem. http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/newyork.html http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/newyork.html
- sickbeard 10y ago
  I don't see anyone opening their homes to let rapists and murderers come to live there. There is a reason why many people are in prison.
Taek 10y ago
There seems to be a pretty decisive anti-prison circle jerk in this thread. It's a trend that is very common among progressives, common enough that I think we could do something about it. Does anyone want to say things in support of prison? If we revamp the prison system, what things should we keep? What do prisons do right? And, what are the next steps for a community willing to invest in changes to our criminal management? How do we make a difference?
- totalZero 10y ago
  Maybe there's a lesson in the fact that few here are willing to support prisons as an industry....it's not very easy to defend this particular system.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  Prisons should basically be a mix between a school and a mental institution. If you are a loser and fucked up, your personal issues should be treated and you should get into a position of not being a loser any more (e.g. get a regular degree, apprenticeship, on which it does not say "done in prison"). You should have to stand up every day and have a normal workday to get used to that. You should have to stay there for as long as you are a threat to society or as long as your situation has not changed and it is likely that you will commit the crime again. So everything that is already that should be kept, everything else we can get rid of. I would personally say, start with socializing them again, then we have an incentive to reduce prison populations by keeping people out, who do not belong there in the first place. As always, when I make this comments I am a hopeless optimist: Do not worry, it is already happening. Also something to cheer you up, America: Where do you think ISIS comes from? If you look for a group of losers, just turn to your local (on HN often praised) European prison.
- fny 10y ago
  I don't think people here is anti-prison, just that they disagree with how prisons fail to operate as correctional/rehabilitative facilities and instead produce more hardened criminals.
KeshandKooley 10y ago
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danieltillett 10y ago
There should be two types of prisons; one for people that will be released one day and one for people that will never be released. The never-to-be-released ones can be the nastist hellholes (if the aim is punishment), but the to-be-released ones need to concentrate on making sure that the prisioners are less likely to offend again once released. I have often thought the solution to the reoffending problem is to fill the prisioners day with heaps of novel activities so that each day is spent learning new things (doesn't really matter what as long as it is not criminal). The aim would be that by the time the prisioner has finished their sentence their old life and self will be forgotten. The human brain only has so much capacity and if you fill it with enough novelty you will overwrite all the old bad information and behaviours. VR has the ability to make this cheap and effective.
- mmagin 10y ago
  The never-to-be-released ones can be the nastist hellholes (if the aim is punishment) I object. They're still human, and as they have been deprived of their freedom, we (society) have been entrusted with caring for them. Even the death penalty (quite flawed as it is) may be better in some sense, morally, than "the nastiest hellholes".
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    I was not arguing for making the never-to-be-released prisons hellhole, just that they are the only prisons you can inflict punishment. Punishing those people that you are going to release is stupid beyond imagination.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      > stupid beyond imagination I was punished. Spanking when I was younger, grounding when I was older. Without these consequences, I would be a worse adult. We may disagree about degree, but "stupid beyond imagination" is an overstatement.
- undersuit 10y ago
  So what happens when you end up in the wrong prison? What happens if you spend 50 years in the hellhole and then are proven innocent? >The aim would be that by the time the prisioner has finished their sentence their old life and self will be forgotten. I know you're talking about the nice prison here, but if you hold that belief then what happens to the innocent person who has had 50 years of hell?
joggery 10y ago
Prisons are dysfunctional and cost too much. Why isn't GPS-tagging, curfew and public record sufficient to protect society? Reform could only be somewhere where >90% people are non-criminal e.g. army, monastery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect
transfire 10y ago
In 100 years or so people will look back at our prisons like we now look back on the Bastille.
- verbify 10y ago
  I look at them now with horror - no need to wait 100 years.
jstoiko 10y ago
One thing that kills me about prisons is that they achieve exactly the opposite of what they are supposed to be achieving. They add more psychological trauma, they create more anger and they force people to focus on what they've done in the past instead of what they could be doing different in the future. The problem is that there are always more important things to worry about in our society than reforming prisons. Not much has changed since prisons have been invented, really. Recidivism is unacceptably high. The solution is not more discipline. It's more respect, more compassion, more dignity, more learning, and more showing that life doing other things is as rewarding if not more than doing the things that lead to prison.
DominikR 10y ago
The notion that there should be no prisons at all is nuts in my view, there must be a way for people to protect themselves from others who repeatedly act violently. But the fact that prisoners frequently have to face rape is sick and shows how dysfunctional the current system is. I even read some time ago an article that stated that the US is the only country in the world where more men than women are raped. (due to the fact that so many men are raped in prison) What I personally believe would be a good way to treat this issue is to have prisoners work in the private sector while their payment will largely be used to pay for prison and to repay their victims for the damage they have caused them. The prisoner is set free once he has paid for all damages. (or as much as is reasonably possible) Prisons will have an incentive to make sure that their prisoners earn as much as possible (trainings and education), victims will receive payments for damages and the prisoners themselves will have an incentive to get out of prison as soon as possible. Of course this can't be done with every type of felony and there's the question if damages are always accurate. Also with this approach some types of felonies cannot be punished. One example would be drug abuse. You are only harming yourself and since no third party can claim damages it also would not be punished. (this alone would hugely reduce prison population) You could even make the case that selling drugs would be legalised since there's clearly a buyer willing to buy and consume it who's not hurting any third parties directly by his choice. I believe it is more reasonable to have prison sentences reflect the damage caused instead of ideology and prison life be more about making it up to the victims (as far as it is possible) instead of creating the most nasty, brutal place imaginable and having people suffer there. It's probably also a better lesson for an offender to have to repay someone for destroying his car than subjecting him to repeated rapes which will likely break him psychologically.
joshfraser 10y ago
I spent my afternoon hanging out with an ex-con and entrepreneur I met through Defy Ventures. They're a great organization that are giving second chances to the incarcerated. If you're looking for a practical way to make a difference, check out https://defyventures.org https://defyventures.org and sign up as a mentor. If you live in the bay area, they have a day trip to Avenal State Prison coming up next month and are looking for volunteers to help as business coaches. Today I asked this entrepreneur for his perspective on what needs to change in our judicial system. Not surprisingly, he gave me a long list of things that are broken, including the corrupting influence of money which incentivizes tough laws and full prisons. And the money which allows people with money to walk away with a slap on the wrist for committing the exact same crime that put him away for years. When he was released, he was scared to leave prison. He shared how the free world is terrifying to those who've been incarcerated for years. He'd been locked up in high school and never had a chance to get a proper education. He couldn't find anyone to hire him. He couldn't find anyone who'd even rent him an apartment with a felony on his record. The only people who reached out to him were his old gang members. Imagine spending the majority of your life behind bars and then being thrown into a world with smart phones and the internet -- neither of which existed when you were locked up. Many of us in this community agree on how unfair the judicial system is in America. Many of us believe in the concept of second chances and redemption. And many of us (myself included) could do a better job at demonstrating that belief with our actions.
jlebrech 10y ago
let the prisoners run the entire prison but have the guards monitor them at all times. like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
TH3R3LL1K 10y ago
Prisoners should be measured. The same way that some companies have performance measurements for its employees, prisons should have behavioural measurement for the prisoners. If the behaviour improves based on a certain grade, then the prisoners get rewarded, otherwise they get punished
- Vintila 10y ago
  How about measuring the prison instead, reform more crooks, the guards get a pay bonus. However, knowing how incentive schemes are normally gamed, they will probably resort to lobotomising the inmates.
jpatokal 10y ago
What I find amazing here is the pathetic modesty of all the requests. It's all about selling onion powder in the commissary or granting model prisoners the right to wear non-white shirts, not (say) the abuse of plea bargaining or the ludicrous length of mandatory sentences.
- mehwoot 10y ago
  the abuse of plea bargaining or the ludicrous length of mandatory sentences. I don't think those really have to do directly with prisons though. It's a related topic.
rand005 10y ago
Related: The Dutch prison crisis: A shortage of prisoners http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37904263 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37904263 > If somebody has a drug problem we treat their addiction, if they are aggressive we provide anger management, if they have got money problems we give them debt counselling. So we try to remove whatever it was that caused the crime. The inmate himself or herself must be willing to change but our method has been very effective. Over the last 10 years, our work has improved more and more. > Fewer than 10% then return to prison after their release. In England and Wales, and in the United States, roughly half of those serving short sentences reoffend within two years, and the figure is often higher for young adults.

265 points by iamjeff 10y ago

I'm all for prison reform, but other than the bits where officers do demeaning things to the prisoners, this really just becomes a list of things that prisoners feel would make their lives more comfortable. Well yeah, no shit. Of course they want it better in there. If they got all this, they'd eventually be complaining that they should have computers and playstations. Prison isn't supposed to be torture (physically or mentally) but it's also not supposed to be better than poor people have it. If poor people can't be taken care of to the point they have these things (and I think they should!) then I don't think starting with the prisons is the right way to go.

chappi42 10y ago
But one could start with the small things: "yelled at...". Totally unnecessary imho. Why do this?
throwawaycanada 10y ago
I don't think poor people are regularly locked in cages with HIV positive serial rapists.
- Avshalom 10y ago
  Right as "fucked" as the poor can be in this country prisoners have even less agency and are even more vulnerable to the abuses of the system they get thrown into.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wolfgke 10y ago
> If poor people can't be taken care of to the point they have these things (and I think they should!) then I don't think starting with the prisons is the right way to go. If you really care about this, then you should advocate that poor people don't produce children anymore so that at least "born poor", that is a common cause of poverty, is mostly eliminated.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  >then you should advocate that poor people don't produce children anymore so that at least "born poor" // That's a false conclusion. You could heavily tax the rich to ensure everyone [who had a child] had sufficient to live on and so no one would be "poor" (you'd have poorer, but not poor per se). There are probably further additional possible ways that the problem could be solved and hence further possible outcomes that the parent could advocate and maintain consistent logic.
williadc 10y ago
You're correct that most of these are asking for prison to be a more tolerable place to live. Making prison a rough experience should encourage inmates to avoid crimes which will send them back. The article's author contends that the current conditions in the prison where he serves his time re-enforce criminal behavior and empowers "gang recruiters, extortion, and other threats" by depriving prisoners. He has the advantage of seeing what happens each day, but has a sample-size issue in that he's only experienced a small number of prisons. I would be interested in seeing his proposals tested in a controlled studies. None of them seems difficult or expensive to implement.
- dom0 10y ago
  > Making prison a rough experience should encourage inmates to avoid crimes which will send them back. RoW actually shows that this basic approach does not work at all.

mmagin 10y ago

One of the few charities (that I'm aware of) in this area: http://justdetention.org/ http://justdetention.org/

nknwn 10y ago

In having served almost 10 years in prison for drugs. I can say that medium and maximum security prisons are often a breeding ground for killers, and dangerous people. Young kids who have done something incredibly stupid usually end up in these places. They are then immediately put in a situation to fuck or fight. This behavior will often escalate to extreme violence or to be broken psychologically, then owned by other inmates, bought and sold like property. Can that kind of behavior be unlearned? I doubt it... I would argue that at best, people can only learn to do something better, but always lurking in the background. This is only one of many of the bizarre insanities of prison life. I personally don't disagree with the idea of punishment or prison. I would however say that prisons are extremely dysfunctional.

throwawaycanada 10y ago
As an outsider I always just assumed those who ran prisons and designed them wanted them to be set up that way.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  On the other hand I always assumed it's due to short-term thinking and incentives misalignment. Incarceration is a quick way to quarantine criminals and fill the need for justice of the offended. A person who ends up in prison (especially the high-security one) is likely to be away for many, many years - at which point what happens when they're released is someone else's problem. Humans are good at dealing with distant consequences in the abstract, but extremely poor at it in practice. So prisons are what they are by default. Of course there are other issues at play too. For instance, a prison can't be too nice, lest it turns into a free vocational school and people will find committing crimes and getting caught to be an excellent way to get education. Or another example - you can't really make prisoners do useful work for the society (as opposed to just rotting in their cells), because it disrupts the market economy and becomes a powerful force for administrators to threaten their local communities ("do X, or else I unleash my 300+ strong force of unpaid workers and drive you out of market"). The more I think about prisons, the more I see it's a very convoluted issue, and there isn't any obvious, simple solution.

_audakel 10y ago

so sad. im glad that in the age of the internet stories like this can come out and reach many people. I just hope that the next generation of leaders who grew up on the internet exposed to many differing ideas will have the courage/determination to find real solustions fix problems like this.

chappi42 10y ago

Well, nothing to do with hackers, but if this > Immediately they are yelled at by officers to strip naked, get ‘nuts to butts,’ and after being searched they are kept naked for several minutes until they are issued some boxers... is true. Boah, how can everybody yell at the 'bad behaviour' of Trump and Clinton and look away here?

dimino 10y ago
I think we all pretty much know inmates are treated poorly, and while it is most certainly a tragedy, we are a) unable to meaningfully change their situations in the short or medium term and b) have more directly effecting issues that take priority. Why is it that all the successful companies in the private prison industry are terrible for the inmates? The client is the state, and the state doesn't care about costs associated with caring for inmates, right? Is there any way to turn that on its head? To... uh, "disrupt" some small part of this?
smcl 10y ago
I agree, it's pretty sick. I can see how this sort of behaviour can become normalised, hard to remove and in some cases part of what the public expect from the prison experience. Many people see prison as a place to be punished, so it's easy for them to rationalise any sort of demeaning or dehumanising treatment as part of the package - "well he/she should've thought about that before they broke the law..." etc In addition if you're a politician you're not going to win votes by campaigning for better conditions in prisons, now matter how you spin it.
- azernik 10y ago
  > In addition if you're a politician you're not going to win votes by campaigning for better conditions in prisons, now matter how you spin it. This is the root cause, and the political/policy effects are a symptom. There are places where this kind of treatment would be considered a scandal, but American culture doesn't agree.
- chappi42 10y ago
  Yes, but how is an inmate supposed to become 'better' in future if he (I assume this only happens to men) is treated this respectless? Maybe you are right with winning votes. But on the other hand I perceive the americans as quite human. And if voters (and politicians) want to reduce the likelyhood of inmates to slide back I think the conditions must be improved (if they really should be that bad - I somehow cannot believe this report, completly unthinkable in Europe (maybe we exagerate a bit towards the other end, don't know)

perfmode 10y ago

If you find this topic interesting, I would recommend that you check out the documentary "13th" on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741 https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741

Barraketh 10y ago

I wonder why there are no private non-profit prisons. There are many states that allow private prisons. There have been multiple articles about how awful these prisons are. Why not try to open a non-profit prison where gov't funds are supplemented with donations and focusing on rehabilitation and humane living conditions. Then we both improve the lives of some inmates, and can more effectively compare outcomes.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
Best idea I've seen on the thread. There's corruption to overcome but the non-profit could similarly bribe the politicians. It's worth someone trying.
danieltillett 10y ago
Because the amount available per prisioner per day is so low that a non-profit prison could not do much better. It is not like the for-profit prisions are running on profit margins of 50%.
- steveax 10y ago
  ~12.5% margin for CCA in 2015 [1]. I suspect that $227M could manage to pay for bringing some fresh produce into the commissary. Edit: not to mention the $890K they spent on lobbying. [1]: http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/11/117983/2015%20Annual%20Letter%20to%20Shareholders%20-%20Final.pdf http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/11/117983/201...
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    This is not a great margin given the capital requirements and political risks. It would be hard for a new non-profit to get to their efficiency without scale and even if you did it would not free up anywhere near the resources required to make major changes in prisoner treatment. The basic problem is still the tiny amount spent per prisoner on anything other than keeping them locked up. We need to spend more if we want them to not just be heading straight back to jail.

CalChris 10y ago

Cost of prison per prisoner per year: $168,000 http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/nyregion/citys-annual-cost-per-inmate-is-nearly-168000-study-says.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/nyregion/citys-annual-c... Average in the US: $31,000 https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-what-incarceration-costs-taxpayers https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-what-... This isn't about justice. It's about prison guard jobs. It's about welfare.

StanislavPetrov 10y ago
It's not just about welfare, its also about political power. For example, New York houses tens of thousands of prisoners from New York City in various upstate prison towns. The population of these prisoners is counted towards the populations of these upstate towns, even though the prisoners cannot vote and aren't from that area. For purposes of gerrymandering, funding, and anything else related to population these prisoners are literally political ammunition. This added clout puts representatives in the statehouse that exist only to flood the prisons with more prisoners, completely beholden to prison guard unions and other prison-related industries. They spend their time blocking any sort of logical criminal reform, marijuana legalization, or anything else that would slow the steady stream of prisoners. Its a corrupt system to the core. http://www.demos.org/publication/census-count-and-prisoners-problem-solutions-and-what-census-can-do http://www.demos.org/publication/census-count-and-prisoners-...
- mchannon 10y ago
  Prison gerrymandering has been reformed in a few places, particularly New York. Due to reforms passed in 2010, prisoners are now counted toward their home districts. California has likewise passed a law to discontinue the process there by 2020. For much of the rest of the country, this is still a problem. http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/newyork.html http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/newyork.html
sickbeard 10y ago
I don't see anyone opening their homes to let rapists and murderers come to live there. There is a reason why many people are in prison.

Taek 10y ago

There seems to be a pretty decisive anti-prison circle jerk in this thread. It's a trend that is very common among progressives, common enough that I think we could do something about it. Does anyone want to say things in support of prison? If we revamp the prison system, what things should we keep? What do prisons do right? And, what are the next steps for a community willing to invest in changes to our criminal management? How do we make a difference?

totalZero 10y ago
Maybe there's a lesson in the fact that few here are willing to support prisons as an industry....it's not very easy to defend this particular system.
allendoerfer 10y ago
Prisons should basically be a mix between a school and a mental institution. If you are a loser and fucked up, your personal issues should be treated and you should get into a position of not being a loser any more (e.g. get a regular degree, apprenticeship, on which it does not say "done in prison"). You should have to stand up every day and have a normal workday to get used to that. You should have to stay there for as long as you are a threat to society or as long as your situation has not changed and it is likely that you will commit the crime again. So everything that is already that should be kept, everything else we can get rid of. I would personally say, start with socializing them again, then we have an incentive to reduce prison populations by keeping people out, who do not belong there in the first place. As always, when I make this comments I am a hopeless optimist: Do not worry, it is already happening. Also something to cheer you up, America: Where do you think ISIS comes from? If you look for a group of losers, just turn to your local (on HN often praised) European prison.
fny 10y ago
I don't think people here is anti-prison, just that they disagree with how prisons fail to operate as correctional/rehabilitative facilities and instead produce more hardened criminals.

KeshandKooley 10y ago

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danieltillett 10y ago

There should be two types of prisons; one for people that will be released one day and one for people that will never be released. The never-to-be-released ones can be the nastist hellholes (if the aim is punishment), but the to-be-released ones need to concentrate on making sure that the prisioners are less likely to offend again once released. I have often thought the solution to the reoffending problem is to fill the prisioners day with heaps of novel activities so that each day is spent learning new things (doesn't really matter what as long as it is not criminal). The aim would be that by the time the prisioner has finished their sentence their old life and self will be forgotten. The human brain only has so much capacity and if you fill it with enough novelty you will overwrite all the old bad information and behaviours. VR has the ability to make this cheap and effective.

mmagin 10y ago
The never-to-be-released ones can be the nastist hellholes (if the aim is punishment) I object. They're still human, and as they have been deprived of their freedom, we (society) have been entrusted with caring for them. Even the death penalty (quite flawed as it is) may be better in some sense, morally, than "the nastiest hellholes".
- danieltillett 10y ago
  I was not arguing for making the never-to-be-released prisons hellhole, just that they are the only prisons you can inflict punishment. Punishing those people that you are going to release is stupid beyond imagination.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    > stupid beyond imagination I was punished. Spanking when I was younger, grounding when I was older. Without these consequences, I would be a worse adult. We may disagree about degree, but "stupid beyond imagination" is an overstatement.
undersuit 10y ago
So what happens when you end up in the wrong prison? What happens if you spend 50 years in the hellhole and then are proven innocent? >The aim would be that by the time the prisioner has finished their sentence their old life and self will be forgotten. I know you're talking about the nice prison here, but if you hold that belief then what happens to the innocent person who has had 50 years of hell?

joggery 10y ago

Prisons are dysfunctional and cost too much. Why isn't GPS-tagging, curfew and public record sufficient to protect society? Reform could only be somewhere where >90% people are non-criminal e.g. army, monastery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect

transfire 10y ago

In 100 years or so people will look back at our prisons like we now look back on the Bastille.

verbify 10y ago
I look at them now with horror - no need to wait 100 years.

jstoiko 10y ago

One thing that kills me about prisons is that they achieve exactly the opposite of what they are supposed to be achieving. They add more psychological trauma, they create more anger and they force people to focus on what they've done in the past instead of what they could be doing different in the future. The problem is that there are always more important things to worry about in our society than reforming prisons. Not much has changed since prisons have been invented, really. Recidivism is unacceptably high. The solution is not more discipline. It's more respect, more compassion, more dignity, more learning, and more showing that life doing other things is as rewarding if not more than doing the things that lead to prison.

DominikR 10y ago

The notion that there should be no prisons at all is nuts in my view, there must be a way for people to protect themselves from others who repeatedly act violently. But the fact that prisoners frequently have to face rape is sick and shows how dysfunctional the current system is. I even read some time ago an article that stated that the US is the only country in the world where more men than women are raped. (due to the fact that so many men are raped in prison) What I personally believe would be a good way to treat this issue is to have prisoners work in the private sector while their payment will largely be used to pay for prison and to repay their victims for the damage they have caused them. The prisoner is set free once he has paid for all damages. (or as much as is reasonably possible) Prisons will have an incentive to make sure that their prisoners earn as much as possible (trainings and education), victims will receive payments for damages and the prisoners themselves will have an incentive to get out of prison as soon as possible. Of course this can't be done with every type of felony and there's the question if damages are always accurate. Also with this approach some types of felonies cannot be punished. One example would be drug abuse. You are only harming yourself and since no third party can claim damages it also would not be punished. (this alone would hugely reduce prison population) You could even make the case that selling drugs would be legalised since there's clearly a buyer willing to buy and consume it who's not hurting any third parties directly by his choice. I believe it is more reasonable to have prison sentences reflect the damage caused instead of ideology and prison life be more about making it up to the victims (as far as it is possible) instead of creating the most nasty, brutal place imaginable and having people suffer there. It's probably also a better lesson for an offender to have to repay someone for destroying his car than subjecting him to repeated rapes which will likely break him psychologically.

joshfraser 10y ago

I spent my afternoon hanging out with an ex-con and entrepreneur I met through Defy Ventures. They're a great organization that are giving second chances to the incarcerated. If you're looking for a practical way to make a difference, check out https://defyventures.org https://defyventures.org and sign up as a mentor. If you live in the bay area, they have a day trip to Avenal State Prison coming up next month and are looking for volunteers to help as business coaches. Today I asked this entrepreneur for his perspective on what needs to change in our judicial system. Not surprisingly, he gave me a long list of things that are broken, including the corrupting influence of money which incentivizes tough laws and full prisons. And the money which allows people with money to walk away with a slap on the wrist for committing the exact same crime that put him away for years. When he was released, he was scared to leave prison. He shared how the free world is terrifying to those who've been incarcerated for years. He'd been locked up in high school and never had a chance to get a proper education. He couldn't find anyone to hire him. He couldn't find anyone who'd even rent him an apartment with a felony on his record. The only people who reached out to him were his old gang members. Imagine spending the majority of your life behind bars and then being thrown into a world with smart phones and the internet -- neither of which existed when you were locked up. Many of us in this community agree on how unfair the judicial system is in America. Many of us believe in the concept of second chances and redemption. And many of us (myself included) could do a better job at demonstrating that belief with our actions.

jlebrech 10y ago

let the prisoners run the entire prison but have the guards monitor them at all times. like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

TH3R3LL1K 10y ago

Prisoners should be measured. The same way that some companies have performance measurements for its employees, prisons should have behavioural measurement for the prisoners. If the behaviour improves based on a certain grade, then the prisoners get rewarded, otherwise they get punished

Vintila 10y ago
How about measuring the prison instead, reform more crooks, the guards get a pay bonus. However, knowing how incentive schemes are normally gamed, they will probably resort to lobotomising the inmates.

jpatokal 10y ago

What I find amazing here is the pathetic modesty of all the requests. It's all about selling onion powder in the commissary or granting model prisoners the right to wear non-white shirts, not (say) the abuse of plea bargaining or the ludicrous length of mandatory sentences.

mehwoot 10y ago
the abuse of plea bargaining or the ludicrous length of mandatory sentences. I don't think those really have to do directly with prisons though. It's a related topic.

rand005 10y ago

Related: The Dutch prison crisis: A shortage of prisoners http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37904263 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37904263 > If somebody has a drug problem we treat their addiction, if they are aggressive we provide anger management, if they have got money problems we give them debt counselling. So we try to remove whatever it was that caused the crime. The inmate himself or herself must be willing to change but our method has been very effective. Over the last 10 years, our work has improved more and more. > Fewer than 10% then return to prison after their release. In England and Wales, and in the United States, roughly half of those serving short sentences reoffend within two years, and the figure is often higher for young adults.