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Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

525 points by omegaworks 9y ago

scandox 9y ago
Love when the problem as stated contains its own solution.
- mamon 9y ago
  You mean: send all the prisoners to Harvard, let them have education and well-paying job? :)
  - pavlov 9y ago
    Or send all Harvard business school students to prison? It's a bit more expensive on the short term, but will save money on the long term by reducing the economic damage they might do if free.
    - afarrell 9y ago
      har har har. Or do you genuinely believe that just rounding up students of a university and throwing them in jail will improve the economy?
      - wojt_eu 9y ago
        or just MBA students?
- stoolpigeon 9y ago
  I think it helps show the cost of crime and look at different solutions but I don't see how it contains the solution. I had a car stolen by some guys once. They used my car to drive around breaking in to other cars and stealing things. The police caught them and took me to me car so that I could get it back. I also had to go through all the stuff in the back and tell the police what wasn't mine. It turns out they had been arrested in California. California sent them to Arizona so that they could go to a trade school. All their needs were covered, they just needed to complete the program. Instead the failed out and then went on a crime spree in their new home state. I'm sure it was a very cost effective solution for CA but I'm not sure about society as a whole.
  - IIAOPSW 9y ago
    I would be legit interested in some data on mandatory trade school v. traditional prison. You're anecdote doesn't look good but lets at least give the idea a fair shake.
  - scandox 9y ago
    It's a numbers game really. At present the numbers show that prison makes people worse. I'll add my own anecdata and say that I've seen people come out of prison much worse than they went in. And, if, for $75,000 per person per annum we can't work towards better outcomes, then I think we can agree something is very wrong with the current approach.
    - fivestar 9y ago
      Whether or not it makes them worse, it keeps them away from everyone else where they can do serious damage. If you want to fix what is wrong you start by not labeling people "felons" for life--change every law so that when someone gets out they get their full rights restored--voting, right to bear arms, all of it. And do away with sex offender registries and all of it. If they re-offend, put them away for good.
  - ido 9y ago
    Isn't an inordinately large percentage of US prison population due to fairly minor drug offences? I would think the argument is that fewer people need to be imprisoned for crimes that don't really negatively affect society as much as sending them to prison does.
    - bluedino 9y ago
      No, it's like 10-15% at the state level. It's higher at the federal level but those guys are in there for distribution not getting caught with a joint.
  - Sacho 9y ago
    > California sent them to Arizona so that they could go to a trade school. All their needs were covered, they just needed to complete the program. Instead the failed out and then went on a crime spree in their new home state. I'm sure it was a very cost effective solution for CA but I'm not sure about society as a whole. The problem is identification; we can't identify which people will end up being "good guys" or "bad guys" after any form of prison or community work. There are some extreme cases where you can make the determination(although beware the slippery slope of discrimination that seeps in..), but for the rest, what do you do? This is a genuine question. Jailing people is both costly and doesn't seem to have a positive effect on their life prospects. Many people that go into jail for a minor offense end up incapable of finding a job(felon status) or a place in society(everyone left them and moved on) and they turn to crime and re-offend. I agree that this doesn't contain "the" solution, but it's a good way to shine the light that our current solution isn't working either. Prison serves as a "out of sight, out of mind" choice and few people concern themselves with what happens to inmates once they try to reintegrate into society. If we're going to continue jailing people, then we should also look to mitigate the adverse effects - look for ways to integrate people after they serve their time, look into reducing the number of offenses you can be jailed for, etc.
cjCamel 9y ago
Bizarre comparison! Prisons need to safely and securely provide accommodation for "high-risk, high-need" human beings to survive and be rehabilitated. Universities have a wholly different set of requirements.
- abricot 9y ago
  I agree. Maybe they should try comparing the cost with 24 hour psychological health treatment.
- ianai 9y ago
  One could say "high risk, high need" also applies to: -People otherwise neglected by society, like minorities. -The impoverished -Children/young adults Maybe if society actually prepared its people for...itself (society) we'd have fewer problems? I'm willing to bet $1 of room, board, and education alleviate $100 (or more) of incarceration. Current US budget for prisons: 74 billion Current US budget for education: 68 billion
- lb1lf 9y ago
  > (...) and be rehabilitated. -Never having experienced the US penal system first hand, I cannot be too bombastic - but from the outside, it sure looks as if rehabilitation has taken a back seat to punishment. If one were of a sufficiently cynical disposition, it would be tempting to assume that all involved parties (except the inmates) has more to gain from keeping people locked up than rehabilitating them.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    Rehabilitation must exist but it must also take the back seat to punishment. In Europe there is this strange concept that developed that crime is a sort of disease and that prisons are kind of hospital. So there is some expectation that a criminal will be "cured" when leaving jail. And many judges got to the thinking that crime is caused by poverty and since jail will not cure poverty we should not send criminals to prison. And you end up with guys with a 10 pages long criminal record and who haven't spent a night in jail.
smsm42 9y ago
Does this include housing, food, healthcare, etc. for Harvard figure? Looks like not, so the comparison is kinda meaningless. Also: 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. I looked for the word "union" in the article and it's not there. I guess it's an unsolvable mystery why the costs raise. And even if the number of inmates declines (as it already did, according to the article) would the workforce be reduced? Doesn't look likely, unions are very powerful voting blocks.
- deleted 9y ago
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- parhurs 9y ago
  So you looked for evidence to support your a priori beliefs, didn't find it and still made insinuations. Good on you.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    Er, what? I am struggling to understand how your comment relates to what I wrote. Once more: 1. Comparison of Harvard tuition to prisoner's costs is meaningless as done in the article 2. The article itself mentions costs raise mainly because of labor costs 3. The article itself mentions that drop in the inmates number did not reduce labor costs 4. The article does not mention any of the factors influencing labor costs. Which evidence you think I am missing?
WalterBright 9y ago
Another option is to put non-violent offenders in camps. The deal is if they stay in the camp and follow the rules, they can serve out their sentence there. Run away and they go to the real prisons.
- pvg 9y ago
  It's not a very effective option because non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated. You could send them all home and still be more or less where you started.
  - diggan 9y ago
    Now I'm not american, but "non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated" didn't sound right to me. According to "Table 1.1. Estimated number of felony convictions in state courts, 2006" [0] it seems that only 18% of convictions are because of violent crimes, leading to 82% being non-violent, that doesn't feel like "a small fraction" to me. It's not the latest number, but feels you're trying to give a different view than reality. - [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_Sentences_in_State_Courts.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_S...
    - pjc50 9y ago
      That's of the convicted, not of those in prison at any one time.
      - outsidetheparty 9y ago
        "Three out of five people in jail are unconvicted of any crime and are simply too poor to post even low bail to get out while their cases are being processed. Nearly 75 percent of both pretrial detainees and sentenced offenders are in jail for nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order offenses." https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/incarcerations-front-door-the-misuse-of-jails-in-america/legacy_downloads/incarcerations-front-door-summary.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Pub... There's a sort of pedantic distinction between "prison" and "jail" that can make these stats confusing, and occasionally deliberately misleading. If you're in "prison", then by definition you've been convicted. The percentage of nonviolent inmates is very high in both "jail" and "prison", though; the statement "non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated" is simply incorrect.
flexie 9y ago
I get it - it's tempting to solve the Harvard Business School issue by sending the MBA students to prison before they wreck havoc on the economy. But I'm not sure their dads would pay the exceeding tuition. Also, there is the whole question of whether it would be fair to the other prisoners. Pretty soon the prison economy would be infested with cigarette derivatives and yard swaps.
- andy_ppp 9y ago
  I'd like to see what would happen in prison if these Harvard types destabilised the market...
  - splike 9y ago
    MBAs destabilise the market? By taking a six sigma approach to introduce cryptocurrencies into the prison system, I don't see how it couldn't be a success.
  - shagie 9y ago
    That was recently answered... http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-series-casts-bernie-madoff-not-only-as-a-crook-but-a-product-of-a-corrupt-system-2017-01-12 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-series-casts-bernie-mad... > “Bernie really was a successful businessman with quite original insights into the market, and he’s continued applying his business instincts in prison,” Fishman said. “At one point, he cornered the hot chocolate market. He bought up every package of Swiss Miss from the commissary and sold it for a profit in the prison yard. He monopolized hot chocolate! He made it so that, if you wanted any, you had to go through Bernie.” The search for "madoff swiss chocolate" will find many more articles based on the above quote.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Just like in the producers :-) "While Max and Franz earnestly supervise rehearsals, Leo continues their old scam - overselling shares of the play to their fellow prisoners, and even to the warden. The song "Prisoners of Love" plays while the credits roll."
FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
Think about that for a second...$75K/yr for abhorrent, yet improving conditions and you'll come to the correct conclusion that contractors are absolutely fleecing not only the p̶r̶i̶s̶o̶n̶s̶ tax payers, but the prisoners themselves. Half a lifetime ago, I had to spend a weekend in jail while visiting a friend in California (accused of theft by a drunk lady who couldn't find her credit cards and fingered me instead of realizing that she may have left it at the bar. The best part was when I had to fly back out for a court date, they told me they were dropping the charge for an obvious lack of evidence. This decision was made on the actual court date, so I got to waste even more money on airfare and travel ). I was surprised at the entrepreneurial zeal of those who have no issue profiting from misery and suffering. In the LA area at least, many former/older celebrities are investors or owners of prison supply companies. Most notable was Bob Barker's company which sold travel-sized generic toothpaste for $7. In this case, the price is wrong, Bob. The fingerprinting machine was the size of a ultra-deluxe 70's Xerox machine, regularly needed service, and looked like it had a sticker price around 5 figures (a feature that is just an add-on to $500 phones.) I think that 10x-20x inflation is pretty consistent across the board in the American penal system. The collect calling system is also beyond ridiculous given the near zero cost of landline telecommunications and that most cell phones can't receive collect calls. The food you're eating is the absolute worst (in terms of taste of course) nutritionally. Nearly everything is processed and is done so in the cheapest way possible. When I say as cheap as possible, I mean that the $.49 Nissin Ramen is an actual delicacy (No exaggeration. Some of the inmates would pool their resources together and "cook" the ramen in a giant plastic bag with hot water that surely must be leeching pcb's and/or phthalates from the container.) After a few months of that diet, even the most physically fit people developed a weird type of gut and loss of musculature. I didn't eat anything while there, but I observed that the only nutritional guideline that could possibly be met that of 2K+ calories/day. I know it's not Club Med, but that type of diet is a blocker for any type of rehabilitation. It was depressing to look at and had the effect of making one more docile and depressed. So while California may spend $75K per prisoner, the value they spend is probably closer to $7K. It's kind of brilliant in a sadistic way, as if the prisons, their programs, food, and environment were designed to maximize recidivism. Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if some elements were designed in this way
- 9y ago
danblick 9y ago
Strangely, I was just reading about the costs of prison in California because I read an article about "the grave injustice of mandatory sentencing" [1] and was curious about the associated costs to taxpayers. I don't feel personally affected by this issue, but I get the sense we are sentencing too many people for too long for non-violent drug offenses. Anyway, the cost of the prison system in California is about $7.9 billion according to: https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-what-incarceration-costs-taxpayers https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-what-... or (given 39 million people in California) about $200 per taxpayer (no, that's not the best metric). If the cost per prisoner is going up because we're releasing people from prisons this year, that's probably a good thing. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/politics/mandatory-minimum-sentencing-sessions/?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottomlarge http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/politics/mandatory-minimum-sen...
- jopsen 9y ago
  The day you suddenly feel affected by the issue, you won't be commenting on HN anymore. And with the questionable state of the US justice system you don't even have to commit a crime. An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent. Also, the problem is too long sentences for pretty much all crimes.. Americans aren't very forgiving.
  - BearGoesChirp 9y ago
    >An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent. Source? From what I remember, 4% is for death row, which has a much higher standard of guilt. Most people who are sentenced for a crime plea guilty to avoid worse charges, which is a situation where a rational innocent individual would plea, meaning that far far more are likely innocent.
timwaagh 9y ago
just outsource this to a low cost area. i'm sure a poor state would love to make some money housing california prisoners.
- ptaipale 9y ago
  But I guess California prison guards and their unions - probably not an insignificant contributor to election budgets of some politicians - would not like that? They would bring up issues like isolation of prisoners from their friends and families (further increasing their re-offending risk) and dumping of working conditions (immoral). And that if you do this, you won't be re-elected.
  - HillaryBriss 9y ago
    > probably not an insignificant contributor to election budgets of some politicians most definitely not insignificant. http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/02/are-for-profit-prisons-or-public-unions http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/02/are-for-profit-prisons-or-...
erikb 9y ago
That sounds totally fine in my eyes. I live outside the US and a relatively cheap lifestyle, so a lot cheaper than the average US citizen. And I say if you add the security requirements of a prison on top of my life I could easily be at $70k-$80k. What the article probably doesn't consider is the costs of daily life. I can't imagine Harvard+eating+sleeping+takingShowers+heating+clothing really just costs $75k/year, then everybody would go to Harvard, even those who already have a PHD.
jagermo 9y ago
Does the number include the housing and living costs for the students? edit: sorry, that was not a polemic post. But if the number for the students excludes stuff like food, rent or other living costs (e.g. medical checkups) that are "included" with prisoners, the gap might be smaller. I just checked the numbers for Germany, on the average, a prisoner costs 3281,40 Euro per month, so about 40k Euro or 45k USD per year. So, yeah, it seems like California is getting shafted, somehow.
- ygaf 9y ago
  Don't apologise, the problem lies in other people.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  The Harvard/MIT numbers are around $66K all-in (including room and food).
- lorenzhs 9y ago
  Now go on Google Images and search for pictures of a German prison, and compare that to the situation in California.
z3t4 9y ago
It would probably be good for society if those prisoners who wanted would be sent to a school instead. I can't imagine a better punishment!
robertlagrant 9y ago
Remember when "university" meant "for anyone"? Why should Harvard tuition fees cost anywhere near what it costs to incarcerate someone 24/7?
- chii 9y ago
  both have "facilities", both have lots of administrators, and lease lots of ground/buildings to rent....
  - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
    In many other countries public universities are very cheap and even private ones are cheap compared to US. Also, in many big cities rent is higher than a suburban campus.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  Didn't it mean "for all knowledge"? When universities appeared, they were clearly not for everyone.
  - robertlagrant 9y ago
    As in they were universally accessible, not that everyone should go to one. I.e. not just education for the rich, education for the smart.
- mch82 9y ago
  Tuition is a separate issue from annual cost of operations.
agumonkey 9y ago
Gonna throw some weird idea about prison, what about: - Smaller but individual cells. (have to think about how to keep them very clean) - No outside yard for crowd. - No plural bathroom. Everything you do is for the benefit of society 90% and the rest for you. - Clean something outside, plant trees I don't know, so you get walk, sun and forest time. - You can read books, or some journals. - You can talk to old wise persons. - You don't have TV, video games. - You can work (producing parts, fixing things) again for the benefit of society. - You can do exercice: biking, rowing. Qi gong or Yoga too. (bonus, plug bikes to generate electricity) - You get simple healthy food: raw veggies, some meat, some fruits. No sauce, no dessert. Basically a cheap mindful retreat with optional work. Lowering costs as much as possible and prisonner suffering at the same time. You can improve your mind and your body while paying your mistake by being cut from the group. Nothing more.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  i like the idea but there is not much you can do to coerce folks into doing the activities you suggest. Not everyone in prison is of a good nature.
  - icantdrive55 9y ago
    What is it about living in the US that makes people join gangs, sell drugs, take drugs, and commit larceny? To me, it's obvious. I don't even bother to debate it anymore. It has multiple heads. I don't think we have the best system, and our values have declined, or maybe they were never that great? Just make money? And so much of our self/sexual worth is predicated upon the the great American question, "What do you do?", or more importantly, "How much do you make?". I don't respond to people that are that shallow. Lately, I tell people I'm a retired porn star. Yea--there's a pause. It's great for the wealthy kids--at least now. I think most of you know exactly what I'm getting at.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    Nobody is forced to do anything actually. Only outside things will be done chained, loose enough to do the thing but otherwise no orders or anything. My idea is that people with nothing to do, and no absurd violent crowds will start to soften and try stuff out of boredom or old desires (say before they turned into the "dark side"). You either stay silently in your cell or you do something that won't cost society and will give them something back, and you will also get something on the way (new knowledge, less boredom, health, etc).
jlebrech 9y ago
at that cost they should send prisoners to an island and send them $50,000 of care packages.
- jopsen 9y ago
  No need for an island, just set them up with an apartment, an GPS tracker, and a Netflix account... Most of them will happily sit at home and watch Netflix :)
  - jlebrech 9y ago
    yeah, that would be cheap. they can have pizza delivered and call hookers lol
  - smileysteve 9y ago
    Just a thought, that's also tax free income (if we're assuming not counting prison jobs program.)
rini17 9y ago
~9 billion/year total? That would be enough to establish a penal colony on moon, perhaps?
csmark 9y ago
The USA has ~5% of the world's population but 22% of the world's prisoners. Financial profiting from prisoners: Prison Labor - paid $0.93-0.16/hr California Prisons didn't want to release prisoners because they would loose cheap labor..Courts said they had to: https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court-it-cant-release-inmates-early-because-it-would-lose-cheap-prison-labor-c3795403bae1 https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court-it-cant-rel... 30% of California forest firefighters are prisoners .. The state argued against parole credit for these prisoners as it would draw down the labor force and lead to depletion of the firefighter force. Someone already mentioned the profit of commissaries. Some are actually run by private companies operating inside the prison
- wonderous 9y ago
  "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Legally speaking seems like in the US that prisoners are slaves. SOURCE: https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.html https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.htm...
  - pessimizer 9y ago
    Yup, it's literally and constitutionally slavery.
  - wallflower 9y ago
    13th is a Netflix documentary about this. Warning: It may be quite difficult to watch. https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741 https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741
    - yjgyhj 9y ago
      Is there a DRM-free way to watch this?
      - kefka 9y ago
codyb 9y ago
I live in Bedstuy in Brooklyn, a predominately African American community in NYC. Before this I've lived in Albany, NY; Bushwick; and in the housing projects in Brownsville. NY has recently taken a significant step forward in ensuring adequate access to higher education through the legislature's and Cuomo's initiative to bring tuition free higher education to all NYS residents. I've become part of several minority communities and met many people with circumstances not so fortunate as mine. It is unbelievable to hear how such a large percentage of these young men have spent time in prison. During highschool I found it odd that in a school with a greater than 60% African American community the AP and IBO classes I was enrolled in were consistently 90% white. I skipped a lot of class back then and was always amazed by the peers who, despite by all standards being considered "the bad kids", could tear a car apart and build it all back together again. In the projects in Brownsville I learned that my girlfriends mother had secured some sort of video shooting arrangement, she said the entire neighborhood would turn out in their Sunday's finest when the cameras were around. Everyone wanted to see what was going on. In the projects in Brownsville I noticed an abject lack of activity spaces and an abject lack of green. Brownsville is one of the poorest communities in NYC and it consists primarily of a large number of bleak housing project buildings arrayed across several blocks. I have never heard so many sirens as I did in Brownsville. In the short month I was there my girlfriends mother literally walked into a shoot out to calm some of the younger community members down. I've always thought to myself that I could do anything anyone else could do (well not always, took a lot of introspection in highschool). I mean, look at the person doing it. They have two arms, I have two arms. They have two legs, I have two legs. They've got a head and brain and I have exactly the same. It would clearly be obnoxious not to believe in any other person the same way. I believe we're very fortunate to ride the subways in NYC because when you see a child hankering for a balloon you realize that child is just like any other. I applaud this effort. I've met so many people who are smart as whips and deserve the access to the opportunities and future I had and have. And that's why I believe the solution starts from the ground up.
gabemart 9y ago
This is a cheap, sensational headline and an article that lacks depth and analysis. At the end of 2006, there were ~160,000 people in prison "institutions" in the state of California[1]. The design capacity of those institutions was ~79,000 people[1], so the occupation was ~204% of the design capacity. At the end of 2016, there were ~114k people in prison institutions[2], which was ~134% of the design capacity. Obviously, if prisons are vastly overcrowded, and over time the number of people in prison is reduced substantially, the per-prisoner cost will sharply increase. There are no financial savings on infrastructure because institutional capacity is still vastly exceeded, and the savings in other areas will not be proportional to the overall drop in prison population because the people released early tend to be less expensive to imprison, as they tend to be incarcerated for less serious crimes. Whatever one's political allegiance, the fact that the prison system in the state of California has been running at a minimum over 130% of design capacity for the last decade is a tremendously serious issue, and it feels trivialising to make a nonsensical comparison to the cost of university tuition, and to present the fact that per-prisoner costs have risen while prisoner numbers have fallen as anything less than blindingly obvious. A discussion of the prison crisis in California seems completely worthy of Hacker News, but it shouldn't be based on an article like this. [1] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad0612.pdf [2] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad1612.pdf
- sambe 9y ago
  The article does lack any sort of depth. However, it sounds like you're opposed to the headline itself, which seems to be true, and you haven't refuted it, have you? The article does indeed mention the prison population has declined due to a reduction in overcrowding, but that costs are still rising. The high per-prisoner cost remains a fact, regardless of whether it was cheaper in the past or what caused that.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
erbdex 9y ago
If you haven't, Netflix's has a documentary called 13TH[1] where a loop hole in the slavery abolishment act was used to mass incarcerate blacks in the USA. As indicated in other threads, USA is inhabited with just 5% of the world's population but runs 25% of all prisons. [1] https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80091741 https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80091741
- fivestar 9y ago
  Do you really believe this crap?
voodooranger 9y ago
The article forgot to mention that the California prison guards union bankrolls most California politicians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_Officers_Association https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peac...
briandear 9y ago
The other way of looking at this story is that Harvard nearly costs $75,000 per year despite being tax exempt with billions of dollars of tax deductible donations/endowment.
kapauldo 9y ago
Seems like it would be smarter to just give them the money and revoke it if they break the law again.
- kbart 9y ago
  I imagine a lot of people would be tempted to commit a crime for $75k then. A better alternative would be to spend at least some of these money on prevention programs to create alternatives for young offenders with the poor background.
- chrshawkes 9y ago
  Wow, so I can rob a bank than get out and collect 75k, that is an awesome thought.
  - yjgyhj 9y ago
    How about I rob your store Thursday and you mine Friday?
s-brody 9y ago
Why is this on HN?
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  Are you implying that it should not be?
  - s-brody 9y ago
    Yes. Am I missing something?
    - kwhitefoot 9y ago
      I was hoping that you might explain why.
      - s-brody 9y ago
        I was under the impression that this is a purely programming-related list.
        kwhitefoot 9y ago
        I think you have been mis-informed. This site is for things of _interest_ to 'hackers' not merely for things related to them.
- eplanit 9y ago
  Threads that push the narrative of the "Prison Industrial Complex", and also "Universal Basic Income", are always welcomed on HN.
- Bakary 9y ago
  The amount of votes and comments seem to indicate that it is very well suited to this website.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
cubano 9y ago
Do people not realize almost the entire CJS is basically a jobs program for the very people whom directly influence how the laws are made that self-perpetuate their incomes? That usually works out well, right?
bedhead 9y ago
Without having read this, I would imagine healthcare costs among a prison population would be higher by orders of magnitude.
sharemywin 9y ago
Reminds me of the article about million dollar blocks. http://www.npr.org/2012/10/02/162149431/million-dollar-blocks-map-incarcerations-costs http://www.npr.org/2012/10/02/162149431/million-dollar-block...
soup10 9y ago
giving criminals rights is a politically toxic because of religious doctrine: the point of jail is not to learn, but to suffer. the idea is if you flagrantly disrespect god(aka the power structure of the society you live in), you must suffer as an example to others. Its not an ideal system, but there's a certain sensibility to it that stabilizes society. If people saw those that go to jail, come out better persons. They might get the idea that the criminal is a leadership figure, or that they too might become better persons after experimenting with crime. I'm a strong believer in prison reform, and treating criminals as victims of the difficult choices life offers you. It shouldn't be the accepted standard to put them in a cage and forget they exist, we need to show them the flaws of their moral system: we need to preach to them until they concede the errors of their ways and show meekness.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  What "religious doctrine" would that be?
  - narag 9y ago
    A clue: there are a number of religions that include the concept of hell. Hell is the ultimate retribution, in case society wasn't able to apply it in this world. The underlying idea is that justice is a balance. If someone commits a crime, the reality is unbalanced and equilibrium must be restored punishing the culprit. This idea has been developed by some philosophers, Kant IIRC (but a lot of Kant's work is mostly a repackaging of Christianism). Edit, just to add some history: justice system was very entangled with religion since forever. Romans were the ones that greatly developed the technical aspects. There was the directum --the righteous thing-- aspect vs the ius, the technical one, the contracts, the seek of solutions and social peace.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      The idea that some people are irredeemable seems to be rather against the current of most Christian thought.
tphyahoo 9y ago
http://www.dunwalke.com/ http://www.dunwalke.com/ Dillon Read & Co Inc and The Aristocracy of Prison Profits. "I remember reading some of the Carlyle Group’s marketing material about their success in leveraged buyouts of companies that did lots of contracts and business with the federal government. They claimed to have achieved annual investment returns of 35%, in the range of the returns that I estimate Dillon to have made on Cornell Corrections. If you understand the story of Cornell Corrections, you will get a good understanding of the type of investment that achieves 35% investment returns for private investors on the stocks of companies that enjoy growth in government contracts and the fruits of “privatization.”"
outsidetheparty 9y ago
This is what privatization leads to. Hand off a government function to a profit-seeking organization, well, it's gonna seek profits; the taxpayer winds up paying for the thing and also for someone else to make their profits off the thing. Seriously has there ever been a situation where privatizing an industry led to actually reduced costs, and didn't lead to reduced quality of output? Even if you accept the (IMHO dubious) premise that private industry is necessarily going to be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain has to be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for the taxpayer.
- ohthehugemanate 9y ago
  This is an extremely simplistic way to look at things. Private organizations do some things much better than public, and vice versa. More often than not it depends on the question you're asking... And there's a lot of contextualization needed in the answer. How's your electrical infrastructure, or your water infrastructure doing? They're supplied by private industry. How's your religious institution, your school bus, your local day care? What about public-private partnerships, like public transit? Personally, I will take the mixed market universal health care systems of France and Germany, over the 100% public Canadian waiting list system... but that depends on your criteria for success. Volumes are written about each one of these cases, how to evaluate "success", what combinations of structures work well in what social contexts, etc. Other countries have private companies involved in prisons, and get great results... But their markets are different, their contract terms are different, the avenues of influence for legislation are different, their bidding processes are different, and their cultures are different. To reduce it to "privatization always raises costs and reduces quality of output" is ridiculous.
  - outsidetheparty 9y ago
    > Private organizations do some things much better than public, and vice versa. That is certainly a true statement, and I'm of course by no means suggesting that privately-supplied functions such as "day care" or "religious institutions" should be government-run. I'm reacting primarily to the current American administration's de facto stance of "small government good, big government bad," which I feel is just as simplistic as the straw-man version of my question you constructed. Privatization efforts have been proposed (or have long since been carried out -- this tendency long predates Trump) for the prison system, the education system, air traffic control, even the military itself through use of mercenary companies like whatever Blackwater's name is now. (There's certainly room for reasoned disagreement about which functions a government ought to serve compared to private industry, but surely "military and jails" belong under the government umbrella?) In every case I'm aware of, the justification has been that it will reduce costs due to increased efficiency, yet the end results have been increased costs and reduced quality of service. Maybe Americans are just bad at privatization, but that was a genuine question: has there been a case where privatizing a function traditionally served by the government has improved it? The case under discussion here, the american prison system, certainly hasn't. My main point was this: > Even if you accept the premise that private industry is necessarily going to be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain has to be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for the taxpayer. ...which seems inarguable, yet is rarely if ever addressed by proponents of privatization.
crimsonalucard 9y ago
This seems to be a perverted trend in America. Medical bills, tuition and all fees in general bloated to the point where it doesn't make sense. Is this some sort of anthropological/economic phenomenon? Somebody should get to the bottom of this and write a book.
irpapakons 9y ago
At more than $200 a night you can spend a whole year at a spa. What do the prisoners get for that money? The daily cost for food seems to be about $2 and they live in overcrowded cells. Sounds like a very profitable business for someone.
fivestar 9y ago
We're going to end up like China--executing people for most serious crimes. We only spend the money on prisoners in the US because we have the luxury of doing so. If (when?) we falter, we're right back to frontier style justice. It can't be any other way--letting dangerous criminals out just creates more chaos. And don't lecture me about all the "non-violent" drug offenders--I don't think any of them really exist. They're all shitbags who got jammed up for whatever charges the cops could get them on. For every bleeding heart story, I'll show you 10 that justly deserve to be behind bars.
fivestar 9y ago
Until they murder someone you care about. I sincerely believe there is a reason that people behind bars are behind bars. I don't believe the feel-good narratives about noble prisoners who just had a bad turn in life, especially these days where people with long rap sheets are routinely set free to re-offend at will. I've seen them up close--there's not 1 in 20 that I feel sorry for. Every story is one of a downward spiral where numerous opportunities for betterment were passed up due to a messed up brain. The ones who want to improve themselves have chances to do so, but they tend to drink or use drugs, re-align with their criminal buddies, and re-offend. ETA: I have to emphasize, this is the same bs that allows ISIS to continue to conduct successful terror operations in the first world. Either decide that you want civilization, or get the hell out of the way for people who do and stop calling us fascists when it's more about taking out the trash.
- jlebrech 9y ago
  stick them all in the same village, inspect each house daily and only let approved people in and out of the village. there are also a lot of ghost towns that need filling.
- Bakary 9y ago
  Policies towards crime in America are pretty strict and have been so for a long time, yet the problem continues to fester and the homicide rate itself is still much higher than in most Western nations with comparatively less severe punishments for criminals. It's not just about the feel-good narrative but the actual idea of whether rehabilitation is more effective at getting the low crime rate you want than focusing on protestant-type punishment, even if it seems that a lot of unpleasant people are then treated better than the public would want them to be. As for terrorism, the principle is similar. The "tough guy" response can actually be security theater: short of policing every interaction, it's difficult to prevent every attack, although of course more can be done. If you start changing everything about the way your country functions after one attack, it also incentivizes more attacks. It doesn't help that the aggressive and nationalistic reaction is exactly what ISIS is hoping to trigger in the West. Not to mention the absurdity of having a strong policy towards terrorism while at the same time giving close support to nations such as SA. To summarize, there's a lot more to consider other than people simply being too nice to survive.
EternalData 9y ago
Criminal justice in the United States borrows a lot more from the Scarlet Letter than rational policy.
jaggi1 9y ago
Government runs something inefficiently. That is a big news! Nah. It is known. This is prison industrial complex at play fueled by insecurities of average American.
1024core 9y ago
I think the Prison Industry should be judged by their recidivism rate. The Prison Guards union in Cali is very, very strong (they were behind the '3 strikes' law, ensuring a lifetime of "clients"). Their pay and benefits should be tied to the recidivism rate. Prisons should not be training grounds for future criminals, but they are today. Also: prisons should be shuffled periodically, mixing up the population. That'll prevent the formation of criminal gangs inside. Outside, they'll be living in a diverse, mixed environment anyways; might as well get them started on that inside.
- linkregister 9y ago
  Shuffling prisoners around breaks up the family ties they have on the outside; visitors have a harder time if they have to travel further. This increases the likelihood prisoners will offend again.
  - 1024core 9y ago
    I meant, shuffle them around within the prison, so they're forced to interact more with other groups.
nautilus12 9y ago
Wait. Im missing something, if there is one employee per every 2 inmates that means each employee earns in the range of Min Wage to 152,000. How much of this is driven by employee salary and how much by administrative and over head costs? Is this just because the cost of living in california is so high they have to pay their guards six digits and above?
blfr 9y ago
Fittingly, it's also a better career move to become a prison guard than attend Harvard: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704132204576285471510530398 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704132204576285...
notadoc 9y ago
Seems like a colossal waste of limited resources and tax revenue. Maybe every non-violent criminal should be put on house arrest with an ankle bracelet instead? Then they can work off a fine, do community service, etc?
dragonwriter 9y ago
Headline is an outright clickbait lie contradicted by the lead sentence; it doesn't cost more than the all-in annual cost of Harvard, but more than tuition. Not that the comparison is particularly meaningful in any case, since it's not like sending convicts to Harvard instead is an available alternative.
- aarongolliver 9y ago
  It says it costs "2,000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses to attend Harvard." so I have no idea what you're on about.
blorsh 9y ago
That is just California being California. Other states are cheaper. If you really wanted to be cheap, you could outsource to a foreign country. You could fly people to the other side of the world and still save money.
bawana 9y ago
is the need for prison simply the side effect of a population density that is too high? But that is a different topic. The issue is the cost of incarceration and how a once noble idea (eliminating bad behavior instead of eliminating the owner) has been 'corporatized'. It seems a fundamental rhythm of human activity is to express the goodness in us with a new idea. The evil in us then tries to maximize profit and efficiency resulting in a loss function that destroys initially unrecognized but important parameters of humanity.
sgarrity 9y ago
How much would Harvard cost if you had to keep students from escaping?

525 points by omegaworks 9y ago

scandox 9y ago

Love when the problem as stated contains its own solution.

mamon 9y ago
You mean: send all the prisoners to Harvard, let them have education and well-paying job? :)
- pavlov 9y ago
  Or send all Harvard business school students to prison? It's a bit more expensive on the short term, but will save money on the long term by reducing the economic damage they might do if free.
  - afarrell 9y ago
    har har har. Or do you genuinely believe that just rounding up students of a university and throwing them in jail will improve the economy?
    - wojt_eu 9y ago
      or just MBA students?
stoolpigeon 9y ago
I think it helps show the cost of crime and look at different solutions but I don't see how it contains the solution. I had a car stolen by some guys once. They used my car to drive around breaking in to other cars and stealing things. The police caught them and took me to me car so that I could get it back. I also had to go through all the stuff in the back and tell the police what wasn't mine. It turns out they had been arrested in California. California sent them to Arizona so that they could go to a trade school. All their needs were covered, they just needed to complete the program. Instead the failed out and then went on a crime spree in their new home state. I'm sure it was a very cost effective solution for CA but I'm not sure about society as a whole.
- IIAOPSW 9y ago
  I would be legit interested in some data on mandatory trade school v. traditional prison. You're anecdote doesn't look good but lets at least give the idea a fair shake.
- scandox 9y ago
  It's a numbers game really. At present the numbers show that prison makes people worse. I'll add my own anecdata and say that I've seen people come out of prison much worse than they went in. And, if, for $75,000 per person per annum we can't work towards better outcomes, then I think we can agree something is very wrong with the current approach.
  - fivestar 9y ago
    Whether or not it makes them worse, it keeps them away from everyone else where they can do serious damage. If you want to fix what is wrong you start by not labeling people "felons" for life--change every law so that when someone gets out they get their full rights restored--voting, right to bear arms, all of it. And do away with sex offender registries and all of it. If they re-offend, put them away for good.
- ido 9y ago
  Isn't an inordinately large percentage of US prison population due to fairly minor drug offences? I would think the argument is that fewer people need to be imprisoned for crimes that don't really negatively affect society as much as sending them to prison does.
  - bluedino 9y ago
    No, it's like 10-15% at the state level. It's higher at the federal level but those guys are in there for distribution not getting caught with a joint.
- Sacho 9y ago
  > California sent them to Arizona so that they could go to a trade school. All their needs were covered, they just needed to complete the program. Instead the failed out and then went on a crime spree in their new home state. I'm sure it was a very cost effective solution for CA but I'm not sure about society as a whole. The problem is identification; we can't identify which people will end up being "good guys" or "bad guys" after any form of prison or community work. There are some extreme cases where you can make the determination(although beware the slippery slope of discrimination that seeps in..), but for the rest, what do you do? This is a genuine question. Jailing people is both costly and doesn't seem to have a positive effect on their life prospects. Many people that go into jail for a minor offense end up incapable of finding a job(felon status) or a place in society(everyone left them and moved on) and they turn to crime and re-offend. I agree that this doesn't contain "the" solution, but it's a good way to shine the light that our current solution isn't working either. Prison serves as a "out of sight, out of mind" choice and few people concern themselves with what happens to inmates once they try to reintegrate into society. If we're going to continue jailing people, then we should also look to mitigate the adverse effects - look for ways to integrate people after they serve their time, look into reducing the number of offenses you can be jailed for, etc.

cjCamel 9y ago

Bizarre comparison! Prisons need to safely and securely provide accommodation for "high-risk, high-need" human beings to survive and be rehabilitated. Universities have a wholly different set of requirements.

abricot 9y ago
I agree. Maybe they should try comparing the cost with 24 hour psychological health treatment.
ianai 9y ago
One could say "high risk, high need" also applies to: -People otherwise neglected by society, like minorities. -The impoverished -Children/young adults Maybe if society actually prepared its people for...itself (society) we'd have fewer problems? I'm willing to bet $1 of room, board, and education alleviate $100 (or more) of incarceration. Current US budget for prisons: 74 billion Current US budget for education: 68 billion
lb1lf 9y ago
> (...) and be rehabilitated. -Never having experienced the US penal system first hand, I cannot be too bombastic - but from the outside, it sure looks as if rehabilitation has taken a back seat to punishment. If one were of a sufficiently cynical disposition, it would be tempting to assume that all involved parties (except the inmates) has more to gain from keeping people locked up than rehabilitating them.
- cm2187 9y ago
  Rehabilitation must exist but it must also take the back seat to punishment. In Europe there is this strange concept that developed that crime is a sort of disease and that prisons are kind of hospital. So there is some expectation that a criminal will be "cured" when leaving jail. And many judges got to the thinking that crime is caused by poverty and since jail will not cure poverty we should not send criminals to prison. And you end up with guys with a 10 pages long criminal record and who haven't spent a night in jail.

smsm42 9y ago

Does this include housing, food, healthcare, etc. for Harvard figure? Looks like not, so the comparison is kinda meaningless. Also: 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. I looked for the word "union" in the article and it's not there. I guess it's an unsolvable mystery why the costs raise. And even if the number of inmates declines (as it already did, according to the article) would the workforce be reduced? Doesn't look likely, unions are very powerful voting blocks.

deleted 9y ago
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parhurs 9y ago
So you looked for evidence to support your a priori beliefs, didn't find it and still made insinuations. Good on you.
- smsm42 9y ago
  Er, what? I am struggling to understand how your comment relates to what I wrote. Once more: 1. Comparison of Harvard tuition to prisoner's costs is meaningless as done in the article 2. The article itself mentions costs raise mainly because of labor costs 3. The article itself mentions that drop in the inmates number did not reduce labor costs 4. The article does not mention any of the factors influencing labor costs. Which evidence you think I am missing?

WalterBright 9y ago

Another option is to put non-violent offenders in camps. The deal is if they stay in the camp and follow the rules, they can serve out their sentence there. Run away and they go to the real prisons.

pvg 9y ago
It's not a very effective option because non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated. You could send them all home and still be more or less where you started.
- diggan 9y ago
  Now I'm not american, but "non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated" didn't sound right to me. According to "Table 1.1. Estimated number of felony convictions in state courts, 2006" [0] it seems that only 18% of convictions are because of violent crimes, leading to 82% being non-violent, that doesn't feel like "a small fraction" to me. It's not the latest number, but feels you're trying to give a different view than reality. - [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_Sentences_in_State_Courts.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_S...
  - pjc50 9y ago
    That's of the convicted, not of those in prison at any one time.
    - outsidetheparty 9y ago
      "Three out of five people in jail are unconvicted of any crime and are simply too poor to post even low bail to get out while their cases are being processed. Nearly 75 percent of both pretrial detainees and sentenced offenders are in jail for nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order offenses." https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/incarcerations-front-door-the-misuse-of-jails-in-america/legacy_downloads/incarcerations-front-door-summary.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Pub... There's a sort of pedantic distinction between "prison" and "jail" that can make these stats confusing, and occasionally deliberately misleading. If you're in "prison", then by definition you've been convicted. The percentage of nonviolent inmates is very high in both "jail" and "prison", though; the statement "non-violent offenders are a small fraction of those incarcerated" is simply incorrect.

flexie 9y ago

I get it - it's tempting to solve the Harvard Business School issue by sending the MBA students to prison before they wreck havoc on the economy. But I'm not sure their dads would pay the exceeding tuition. Also, there is the whole question of whether it would be fair to the other prisoners. Pretty soon the prison economy would be infested with cigarette derivatives and yard swaps.

andy_ppp 9y ago
I'd like to see what would happen in prison if these Harvard types destabilised the market...
- splike 9y ago
  MBAs destabilise the market? By taking a six sigma approach to introduce cryptocurrencies into the prison system, I don't see how it couldn't be a success.
- shagie 9y ago
  That was recently answered... http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-series-casts-bernie-madoff-not-only-as-a-crook-but-a-product-of-a-corrupt-system-2017-01-12 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-series-casts-bernie-mad... > “Bernie really was a successful businessman with quite original insights into the market, and he’s continued applying his business instincts in prison,” Fishman said. “At one point, he cornered the hot chocolate market. He bought up every package of Swiss Miss from the commissary and sold it for a profit in the prison yard. He monopolized hot chocolate! He made it so that, if you wanted any, you had to go through Bernie.” The search for "madoff swiss chocolate" will find many more articles based on the above quote.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- walshemj 9y ago
  Just like in the producers :-) "While Max and Franz earnestly supervise rehearsals, Leo continues their old scam - overselling shares of the play to their fellow prisoners, and even to the warden. The song "Prisoners of Love" plays while the credits roll."

FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago

Think about that for a second...$75K/yr for abhorrent, yet improving conditions and you'll come to the correct conclusion that contractors are absolutely fleecing not only the p̶r̶i̶s̶o̶n̶s̶ tax payers, but the prisoners themselves. Half a lifetime ago, I had to spend a weekend in jail while visiting a friend in California (accused of theft by a drunk lady who couldn't find her credit cards and fingered me instead of realizing that she may have left it at the bar. The best part was when I had to fly back out for a court date, they told me they were dropping the charge for an obvious lack of evidence. This decision was made on the actual court date, so I got to waste even more money on airfare and travel ). I was surprised at the entrepreneurial zeal of those who have no issue profiting from misery and suffering. In the LA area at least, many former/older celebrities are investors or owners of prison supply companies. Most notable was Bob Barker's company which sold travel-sized generic toothpaste for $7. In this case, the price is wrong, Bob. The fingerprinting machine was the size of a ultra-deluxe 70's Xerox machine, regularly needed service, and looked like it had a sticker price around 5 figures (a feature that is just an add-on to $500 phones.) I think that 10x-20x inflation is pretty consistent across the board in the American penal system. The collect calling system is also beyond ridiculous given the near zero cost of landline telecommunications and that most cell phones can't receive collect calls. The food you're eating is the absolute worst (in terms of taste of course) nutritionally. Nearly everything is processed and is done so in the cheapest way possible. When I say as cheap as possible, I mean that the $.49 Nissin Ramen is an actual delicacy (No exaggeration. Some of the inmates would pool their resources together and "cook" the ramen in a giant plastic bag with hot water that surely must be leeching pcb's and/or phthalates from the container.) After a few months of that diet, even the most physically fit people developed a weird type of gut and loss of musculature. I didn't eat anything while there, but I observed that the only nutritional guideline that could possibly be met that of 2K+ calories/day. I know it's not Club Med, but that type of diet is a blocker for any type of rehabilitation. It was depressing to look at and had the effect of making one more docile and depressed. So while California may spend $75K per prisoner, the value they spend is probably closer to $7K. It's kind of brilliant in a sadistic way, as if the prisons, their programs, food, and environment were designed to maximize recidivism. Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if some elements were designed in this way

9y ago

danblick 9y ago

Strangely, I was just reading about the costs of prison in California because I read an article about "the grave injustice of mandatory sentencing" [1] and was curious about the associated costs to taxpayers. I don't feel personally affected by this issue, but I get the sense we are sentencing too many people for too long for non-violent drug offenses. Anyway, the cost of the prison system in California is about $7.9 billion according to: https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-what-incarceration-costs-taxpayers https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-what-... or (given 39 million people in California) about $200 per taxpayer (no, that's not the best metric). If the cost per prisoner is going up because we're releasing people from prisons this year, that's probably a good thing. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/politics/mandatory-minimum-sentencing-sessions/?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottomlarge http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/politics/mandatory-minimum-sen...

jopsen 9y ago
The day you suddenly feel affected by the issue, you won't be commenting on HN anymore. And with the questionable state of the US justice system you don't even have to commit a crime. An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent. Also, the problem is too long sentences for pretty much all crimes.. Americans aren't very forgiving.
- BearGoesChirp 9y ago
  >An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent. Source? From what I remember, 4% is for death row, which has a much higher standard of guilt. Most people who are sentenced for a crime plea guilty to avoid worse charges, which is a situation where a rational innocent individual would plea, meaning that far far more are likely innocent.

timwaagh 9y ago

just outsource this to a low cost area. i'm sure a poor state would love to make some money housing california prisoners.

ptaipale 9y ago
But I guess California prison guards and their unions - probably not an insignificant contributor to election budgets of some politicians - would not like that? They would bring up issues like isolation of prisoners from their friends and families (further increasing their re-offending risk) and dumping of working conditions (immoral). And that if you do this, you won't be re-elected.
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  > probably not an insignificant contributor to election budgets of some politicians most definitely not insignificant. http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/02/are-for-profit-prisons-or-public-unions http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/02/are-for-profit-prisons-or-...

erikb 9y ago

That sounds totally fine in my eyes. I live outside the US and a relatively cheap lifestyle, so a lot cheaper than the average US citizen. And I say if you add the security requirements of a prison on top of my life I could easily be at $70k-$80k. What the article probably doesn't consider is the costs of daily life. I can't imagine Harvard+eating+sleeping+takingShowers+heating+clothing really just costs $75k/year, then everybody would go to Harvard, even those who already have a PHD.

jagermo 9y ago

Does the number include the housing and living costs for the students? edit: sorry, that was not a polemic post. But if the number for the students excludes stuff like food, rent or other living costs (e.g. medical checkups) that are "included" with prisoners, the gap might be smaller. I just checked the numbers for Germany, on the average, a prisoner costs 3281,40 Euro per month, so about 40k Euro or 45k USD per year. So, yeah, it seems like California is getting shafted, somehow.

ygaf 9y ago
Don't apologise, the problem lies in other people.
sokoloff 9y ago
The Harvard/MIT numbers are around $66K all-in (including room and food).
lorenzhs 9y ago
Now go on Google Images and search for pictures of a German prison, and compare that to the situation in California.

z3t4 9y ago

It would probably be good for society if those prisoners who wanted would be sent to a school instead. I can't imagine a better punishment!

robertlagrant 9y ago

Remember when "university" meant "for anyone"? Why should Harvard tuition fees cost anywhere near what it costs to incarcerate someone 24/7?

chii 9y ago
both have "facilities", both have lots of administrators, and lease lots of ground/buildings to rent....
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  In many other countries public universities are very cheap and even private ones are cheap compared to US. Also, in many big cities rent is higher than a suburban campus.
marcosdumay 9y ago
Didn't it mean "for all knowledge"? When universities appeared, they were clearly not for everyone.
- robertlagrant 9y ago
  As in they were universally accessible, not that everyone should go to one. I.e. not just education for the rich, education for the smart.
mch82 9y ago
Tuition is a separate issue from annual cost of operations.

agumonkey 9y ago

Gonna throw some weird idea about prison, what about: - Smaller but individual cells. (have to think about how to keep them very clean) - No outside yard for crowd. - No plural bathroom. Everything you do is for the benefit of society 90% and the rest for you. - Clean something outside, plant trees I don't know, so you get walk, sun and forest time. - You can read books, or some journals. - You can talk to old wise persons. - You don't have TV, video games. - You can work (producing parts, fixing things) again for the benefit of society. - You can do exercice: biking, rowing. Qi gong or Yoga too. (bonus, plug bikes to generate electricity) - You get simple healthy food: raw veggies, some meat, some fruits. No sauce, no dessert. Basically a cheap mindful retreat with optional work. Lowering costs as much as possible and prisonner suffering at the same time. You can improve your mind and your body while paying your mistake by being cut from the group. Nothing more.

ekianjo 9y ago
i like the idea but there is not much you can do to coerce folks into doing the activities you suggest. Not everyone in prison is of a good nature.
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  What is it about living in the US that makes people join gangs, sell drugs, take drugs, and commit larceny? To me, it's obvious. I don't even bother to debate it anymore. It has multiple heads. I don't think we have the best system, and our values have declined, or maybe they were never that great? Just make money? And so much of our self/sexual worth is predicated upon the the great American question, "What do you do?", or more importantly, "How much do you make?". I don't respond to people that are that shallow. Lately, I tell people I'm a retired porn star. Yea--there's a pause. It's great for the wealthy kids--at least now. I think most of you know exactly what I'm getting at.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Nobody is forced to do anything actually. Only outside things will be done chained, loose enough to do the thing but otherwise no orders or anything. My idea is that people with nothing to do, and no absurd violent crowds will start to soften and try stuff out of boredom or old desires (say before they turned into the "dark side"). You either stay silently in your cell or you do something that won't cost society and will give them something back, and you will also get something on the way (new knowledge, less boredom, health, etc).

jlebrech 9y ago

at that cost they should send prisoners to an island and send them $50,000 of care packages.

jopsen 9y ago
No need for an island, just set them up with an apartment, an GPS tracker, and a Netflix account... Most of them will happily sit at home and watch Netflix :)
- jlebrech 9y ago
  yeah, that would be cheap. they can have pizza delivered and call hookers lol
- smileysteve 9y ago
  Just a thought, that's also tax free income (if we're assuming not counting prison jobs program.)

rini17 9y ago

~9 billion/year total? That would be enough to establish a penal colony on moon, perhaps?

csmark 9y ago

The USA has ~5% of the world's population but 22% of the world's prisoners. Financial profiting from prisoners: Prison Labor - paid $0.93-0.16/hr California Prisons didn't want to release prisoners because they would loose cheap labor..Courts said they had to: https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court-it-cant-release-inmates-early-because-it-would-lose-cheap-prison-labor-c3795403bae1 https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court-it-cant-rel... 30% of California forest firefighters are prisoners .. The state argued against parole credit for these prisoners as it would draw down the labor force and lead to depletion of the firefighter force. Someone already mentioned the profit of commissaries. Some are actually run by private companies operating inside the prison

wonderous 9y ago
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Legally speaking seems like in the US that prisoners are slaves. SOURCE: https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.html https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.htm...
- pessimizer 9y ago
  Yup, it's literally and constitutionally slavery.
- wallflower 9y ago
  13th is a Netflix documentary about this. Warning: It may be quite difficult to watch. https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741 https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741
  - yjgyhj 9y ago
    Is there a DRM-free way to watch this?
    - kefka 9y ago

codyb 9y ago

I live in Bedstuy in Brooklyn, a predominately African American community in NYC. Before this I've lived in Albany, NY; Bushwick; and in the housing projects in Brownsville. NY has recently taken a significant step forward in ensuring adequate access to higher education through the legislature's and Cuomo's initiative to bring tuition free higher education to all NYS residents. I've become part of several minority communities and met many people with circumstances not so fortunate as mine. It is unbelievable to hear how such a large percentage of these young men have spent time in prison. During highschool I found it odd that in a school with a greater than 60% African American community the AP and IBO classes I was enrolled in were consistently 90% white. I skipped a lot of class back then and was always amazed by the peers who, despite by all standards being considered "the bad kids", could tear a car apart and build it all back together again. In the projects in Brownsville I learned that my girlfriends mother had secured some sort of video shooting arrangement, she said the entire neighborhood would turn out in their Sunday's finest when the cameras were around. Everyone wanted to see what was going on. In the projects in Brownsville I noticed an abject lack of activity spaces and an abject lack of green. Brownsville is one of the poorest communities in NYC and it consists primarily of a large number of bleak housing project buildings arrayed across several blocks. I have never heard so many sirens as I did in Brownsville. In the short month I was there my girlfriends mother literally walked into a shoot out to calm some of the younger community members down. I've always thought to myself that I could do anything anyone else could do (well not always, took a lot of introspection in highschool). I mean, look at the person doing it. They have two arms, I have two arms. They have two legs, I have two legs. They've got a head and brain and I have exactly the same. It would clearly be obnoxious not to believe in any other person the same way. I believe we're very fortunate to ride the subways in NYC because when you see a child hankering for a balloon you realize that child is just like any other. I applaud this effort. I've met so many people who are smart as whips and deserve the access to the opportunities and future I had and have. And that's why I believe the solution starts from the ground up.

gabemart 9y ago

This is a cheap, sensational headline and an article that lacks depth and analysis. At the end of 2006, there were ~160,000 people in prison "institutions" in the state of California[1]. The design capacity of those institutions was ~79,000 people[1], so the occupation was ~204% of the design capacity. At the end of 2016, there were ~114k people in prison institutions[2], which was ~134% of the design capacity. Obviously, if prisons are vastly overcrowded, and over time the number of people in prison is reduced substantially, the per-prisoner cost will sharply increase. There are no financial savings on infrastructure because institutional capacity is still vastly exceeded, and the savings in other areas will not be proportional to the overall drop in prison population because the people released early tend to be less expensive to imprison, as they tend to be incarcerated for less serious crimes. Whatever one's political allegiance, the fact that the prison system in the state of California has been running at a minimum over 130% of design capacity for the last decade is a tremendously serious issue, and it feels trivialising to make a nonsensical comparison to the cost of university tuition, and to present the fact that per-prisoner costs have risen while prisoner numbers have fallen as anything less than blindingly obvious. A discussion of the prison crisis in California seems completely worthy of Hacker News, but it shouldn't be based on an article like this. [1] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad0612.pdf [2] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad1612.pdf

sambe 9y ago
The article does lack any sort of depth. However, it sounds like you're opposed to the headline itself, which seems to be true, and you haven't refuted it, have you? The article does indeed mention the prison population has declined due to a reduction in overcrowding, but that costs are still rising. The high per-prisoner cost remains a fact, regardless of whether it was cheaper in the past or what caused that.
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erbdex 9y ago

If you haven't, Netflix's has a documentary called 13TH[1] where a loop hole in the slavery abolishment act was used to mass incarcerate blacks in the USA. As indicated in other threads, USA is inhabited with just 5% of the world's population but runs 25% of all prisons. [1] https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80091741 https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80091741

fivestar 9y ago
Do you really believe this crap?

voodooranger 9y ago

The article forgot to mention that the California prison guards union bankrolls most California politicians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_Officers_Association https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peac...

briandear 9y ago

The other way of looking at this story is that Harvard nearly costs $75,000 per year despite being tax exempt with billions of dollars of tax deductible donations/endowment.

kapauldo 9y ago

Seems like it would be smarter to just give them the money and revoke it if they break the law again.

kbart 9y ago
I imagine a lot of people would be tempted to commit a crime for $75k then. A better alternative would be to spend at least some of these money on prevention programs to create alternatives for young offenders with the poor background.
chrshawkes 9y ago
Wow, so I can rob a bank than get out and collect 75k, that is an awesome thought.
- yjgyhj 9y ago
  How about I rob your store Thursday and you mine Friday?

s-brody 9y ago

Why is this on HN?

kwhitefoot 9y ago
Are you implying that it should not be?
- s-brody 9y ago
  Yes. Am I missing something?
  - kwhitefoot 9y ago
    I was hoping that you might explain why.
    - s-brody 9y ago
      I was under the impression that this is a purely programming-related list.
      - kwhitefoot 9y ago
        I think you have been mis-informed. This site is for things of _interest_ to 'hackers' not merely for things related to them.
eplanit 9y ago
Threads that push the narrative of the "Prison Industrial Complex", and also "Universal Basic Income", are always welcomed on HN.
Bakary 9y ago
The amount of votes and comments seem to indicate that it is very well suited to this website.
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cubano 9y ago

Do people not realize almost the entire CJS is basically a jobs program for the very people whom directly influence how the laws are made that self-perpetuate their incomes? That usually works out well, right?

bedhead 9y ago

Without having read this, I would imagine healthcare costs among a prison population would be higher by orders of magnitude.

sharemywin 9y ago

Reminds me of the article about million dollar blocks. http://www.npr.org/2012/10/02/162149431/million-dollar-blocks-map-incarcerations-costs http://www.npr.org/2012/10/02/162149431/million-dollar-block...

soup10 9y ago

giving criminals rights is a politically toxic because of religious doctrine: the point of jail is not to learn, but to suffer. the idea is if you flagrantly disrespect god(aka the power structure of the society you live in), you must suffer as an example to others. Its not an ideal system, but there's a certain sensibility to it that stabilizes society. If people saw those that go to jail, come out better persons. They might get the idea that the criminal is a leadership figure, or that they too might become better persons after experimenting with crime. I'm a strong believer in prison reform, and treating criminals as victims of the difficult choices life offers you. It shouldn't be the accepted standard to put them in a cage and forget they exist, we need to show them the flaws of their moral system: we need to preach to them until they concede the errors of their ways and show meekness.

emodendroket 9y ago
What "religious doctrine" would that be?
- narag 9y ago
  A clue: there are a number of religions that include the concept of hell. Hell is the ultimate retribution, in case society wasn't able to apply it in this world. The underlying idea is that justice is a balance. If someone commits a crime, the reality is unbalanced and equilibrium must be restored punishing the culprit. This idea has been developed by some philosophers, Kant IIRC (but a lot of Kant's work is mostly a repackaging of Christianism). Edit, just to add some history: justice system was very entangled with religion since forever. Romans were the ones that greatly developed the technical aspects. There was the directum --the righteous thing-- aspect vs the ius, the technical one, the contracts, the seek of solutions and social peace.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    The idea that some people are irredeemable seems to be rather against the current of most Christian thought.

tphyahoo 9y ago

http://www.dunwalke.com/ http://www.dunwalke.com/ Dillon Read & Co Inc and The Aristocracy of Prison Profits. "I remember reading some of the Carlyle Group’s marketing material about their success in leveraged buyouts of companies that did lots of contracts and business with the federal government. They claimed to have achieved annual investment returns of 35%, in the range of the returns that I estimate Dillon to have made on Cornell Corrections. If you understand the story of Cornell Corrections, you will get a good understanding of the type of investment that achieves 35% investment returns for private investors on the stocks of companies that enjoy growth in government contracts and the fruits of “privatization.”"

outsidetheparty 9y ago

This is what privatization leads to. Hand off a government function to a profit-seeking organization, well, it's gonna seek profits; the taxpayer winds up paying for the thing and also for someone else to make their profits off the thing. Seriously has there ever been a situation where privatizing an industry led to actually reduced costs, and didn't lead to reduced quality of output? Even if you accept the (IMHO dubious) premise that private industry is necessarily going to be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain has to be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for the taxpayer.

ohthehugemanate 9y ago
This is an extremely simplistic way to look at things. Private organizations do some things much better than public, and vice versa. More often than not it depends on the question you're asking... And there's a lot of contextualization needed in the answer. How's your electrical infrastructure, or your water infrastructure doing? They're supplied by private industry. How's your religious institution, your school bus, your local day care? What about public-private partnerships, like public transit? Personally, I will take the mixed market universal health care systems of France and Germany, over the 100% public Canadian waiting list system... but that depends on your criteria for success. Volumes are written about each one of these cases, how to evaluate "success", what combinations of structures work well in what social contexts, etc. Other countries have private companies involved in prisons, and get great results... But their markets are different, their contract terms are different, the avenues of influence for legislation are different, their bidding processes are different, and their cultures are different. To reduce it to "privatization always raises costs and reduces quality of output" is ridiculous.
- outsidetheparty 9y ago
  > Private organizations do some things much better than public, and vice versa. That is certainly a true statement, and I'm of course by no means suggesting that privately-supplied functions such as "day care" or "religious institutions" should be government-run. I'm reacting primarily to the current American administration's de facto stance of "small government good, big government bad," which I feel is just as simplistic as the straw-man version of my question you constructed. Privatization efforts have been proposed (or have long since been carried out -- this tendency long predates Trump) for the prison system, the education system, air traffic control, even the military itself through use of mercenary companies like whatever Blackwater's name is now. (There's certainly room for reasoned disagreement about which functions a government ought to serve compared to private industry, but surely "military and jails" belong under the government umbrella?) In every case I'm aware of, the justification has been that it will reduce costs due to increased efficiency, yet the end results have been increased costs and reduced quality of service. Maybe Americans are just bad at privatization, but that was a genuine question: has there been a case where privatizing a function traditionally served by the government has improved it? The case under discussion here, the american prison system, certainly hasn't. My main point was this: > Even if you accept the premise that private industry is necessarily going to be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain has to be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for the taxpayer. ...which seems inarguable, yet is rarely if ever addressed by proponents of privatization.

crimsonalucard 9y ago

This seems to be a perverted trend in America. Medical bills, tuition and all fees in general bloated to the point where it doesn't make sense. Is this some sort of anthropological/economic phenomenon? Somebody should get to the bottom of this and write a book.

irpapakons 9y ago

At more than $200 a night you can spend a whole year at a spa. What do the prisoners get for that money? The daily cost for food seems to be about $2 and they live in overcrowded cells. Sounds like a very profitable business for someone.

fivestar 9y ago

We're going to end up like China--executing people for most serious crimes. We only spend the money on prisoners in the US because we have the luxury of doing so. If (when?) we falter, we're right back to frontier style justice. It can't be any other way--letting dangerous criminals out just creates more chaos. And don't lecture me about all the "non-violent" drug offenders--I don't think any of them really exist. They're all shitbags who got jammed up for whatever charges the cops could get them on. For every bleeding heart story, I'll show you 10 that justly deserve to be behind bars.

fivestar 9y ago

Until they murder someone you care about. I sincerely believe there is a reason that people behind bars are behind bars. I don't believe the feel-good narratives about noble prisoners who just had a bad turn in life, especially these days where people with long rap sheets are routinely set free to re-offend at will. I've seen them up close--there's not 1 in 20 that I feel sorry for. Every story is one of a downward spiral where numerous opportunities for betterment were passed up due to a messed up brain. The ones who want to improve themselves have chances to do so, but they tend to drink or use drugs, re-align with their criminal buddies, and re-offend. ETA: I have to emphasize, this is the same bs that allows ISIS to continue to conduct successful terror operations in the first world. Either decide that you want civilization, or get the hell out of the way for people who do and stop calling us fascists when it's more about taking out the trash.

jlebrech 9y ago
stick them all in the same village, inspect each house daily and only let approved people in and out of the village. there are also a lot of ghost towns that need filling.
Bakary 9y ago
Policies towards crime in America are pretty strict and have been so for a long time, yet the problem continues to fester and the homicide rate itself is still much higher than in most Western nations with comparatively less severe punishments for criminals. It's not just about the feel-good narrative but the actual idea of whether rehabilitation is more effective at getting the low crime rate you want than focusing on protestant-type punishment, even if it seems that a lot of unpleasant people are then treated better than the public would want them to be. As for terrorism, the principle is similar. The "tough guy" response can actually be security theater: short of policing every interaction, it's difficult to prevent every attack, although of course more can be done. If you start changing everything about the way your country functions after one attack, it also incentivizes more attacks. It doesn't help that the aggressive and nationalistic reaction is exactly what ISIS is hoping to trigger in the West. Not to mention the absurdity of having a strong policy towards terrorism while at the same time giving close support to nations such as SA. To summarize, there's a lot more to consider other than people simply being too nice to survive.

EternalData 9y ago

Criminal justice in the United States borrows a lot more from the Scarlet Letter than rational policy.

jaggi1 9y ago

Government runs something inefficiently. That is a big news! Nah. It is known. This is prison industrial complex at play fueled by insecurities of average American.

1024core 9y ago

I think the Prison Industry should be judged by their recidivism rate. The Prison Guards union in Cali is very, very strong (they were behind the '3 strikes' law, ensuring a lifetime of "clients"). Their pay and benefits should be tied to the recidivism rate. Prisons should not be training grounds for future criminals, but they are today. Also: prisons should be shuffled periodically, mixing up the population. That'll prevent the formation of criminal gangs inside. Outside, they'll be living in a diverse, mixed environment anyways; might as well get them started on that inside.

linkregister 9y ago
Shuffling prisoners around breaks up the family ties they have on the outside; visitors have a harder time if they have to travel further. This increases the likelihood prisoners will offend again.
- 1024core 9y ago
  I meant, shuffle them around within the prison, so they're forced to interact more with other groups.

nautilus12 9y ago

Wait. Im missing something, if there is one employee per every 2 inmates that means each employee earns in the range of Min Wage to 152,000. How much of this is driven by employee salary and how much by administrative and over head costs? Is this just because the cost of living in california is so high they have to pay their guards six digits and above?

blfr 9y ago

Fittingly, it's also a better career move to become a prison guard than attend Harvard: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704132204576285471510530398 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704132204576285...

notadoc 9y ago

Seems like a colossal waste of limited resources and tax revenue. Maybe every non-violent criminal should be put on house arrest with an ankle bracelet instead? Then they can work off a fine, do community service, etc?

dragonwriter 9y ago

Headline is an outright clickbait lie contradicted by the lead sentence; it doesn't cost more than the all-in annual cost of Harvard, but more than tuition. Not that the comparison is particularly meaningful in any case, since it's not like sending convicts to Harvard instead is an available alternative.

aarongolliver 9y ago
It says it costs "2,000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses to attend Harvard." so I have no idea what you're on about.

blorsh 9y ago

That is just California being California. Other states are cheaper. If you really wanted to be cheap, you could outsource to a foreign country. You could fly people to the other side of the world and still save money.

bawana 9y ago

is the need for prison simply the side effect of a population density that is too high? But that is a different topic. The issue is the cost of incarceration and how a once noble idea (eliminating bad behavior instead of eliminating the owner) has been 'corporatized'. It seems a fundamental rhythm of human activity is to express the goodness in us with a new idea. The evil in us then tries to maximize profit and efficiency resulting in a loss function that destroys initially unrecognized but important parameters of humanity.

sgarrity 9y ago

How much would Harvard cost if you had to keep students from escaping?