8 ms·

Missouri Tells Judges Cost of Sentences

13 points by raheemm 16y ago

lliiffee 16y ago
I wonder if the algorithm includes the taxes that people won't be paying due to sentences. That could get really complicated. For example, having a felony conviction on your record probably hugely reduces lifetime incomes. For certain people, the lost taxes might be much larger than the "direct" costs.
- eli 16y ago
  I doubt it. It's rare politicians consider costs past the next budget year.
- hugh3 16y ago
  If we can predict that, shouldn't we also be estimating the cost of the crimes they won't be committing? A burglar maybe steals $52,000 worth of stuff every year, and it winds up being worthwhile locking him up. But a child rapist has no major impact on economic productivity, so... yeah, I'm starting to see the problem with this mercenary approach to sentencing.
  - lliiffee 16y ago
    If we are committed to the mercenary approach, we would have to define how bad a murder is "in dollars". If you think we should be focused on justice instead of a cold cost-benefit analysis, may I suggest defining how valuable justice is, in dollars? (I'm joking, I think...)
    - matwood 16y ago
      You mean putting a dollar number on a human life? This is done everyday by actuaries primarily for insurance purposes.
      - lliiffee 16y ago
        I meant that I was joking about putting a dollar number on "justice". Although, I'm not sure how unreasonable that is.
      - hugh3 16y ago
        Whatever dollar value may be put on a human life for insurance purposes it's not an actual value. For instance, I can't pay that amount and then kill you.
  - ewjordan 16y ago
    I'll respond out of order: But a child rapist has no major impact on economic productivity, so... yeah, I'm starting to see the problem with this mercenary approach to sentencing. This is almost trivial to account for, though, as long as you have a person looking at the numbers and making a decision - even if a judge sees that there's a large price tag if he sentences a child rapist, he's still going to do it, because the monetary value equivalent to "letting a child rapist back out into the world" is going to be ridiculously high, probably on the order of many millions of dollars. Same thing for other very serious crimes. Where it gets more interesting is cases like "college kid caught carrying eight pounds of marijuana", where there's no clear and present threat to anyone if the kid was given some sort of reduced sentence. If we can predict that, shouldn't we also be estimating the cost of the crimes they won't be committing? Sure, why not? In theory we lock people up because it helps society, right? So why wouldn't we want to consider all the possible higher order effects of different sentences on society as a whole? The problem is mainly that figuring out these effects can be very difficult, and I suspect that some of the second and third order effects end up being comparable in magnitude to the first order ones (direct cost of sentencing). Plus, in many cases we're really locking people up to satisfy a thirst for vengeance, not necessarily to help society in any way whatsoever. It would be nice if we had a better measure of what it actually costs us, though.
  - philk 16y ago
    It's not going to be used that crudely. The child rapist is going to get a hefty sentence regardless of the cost because people want to punish serious crimes more than they want to save a couple of bucks. Where it does come in handy is for relatively minor crimes[1], serving as a spur to consider whether the cost of incarceration is really offset by the benefits to society. [1] Things like drug offenses, etc.
acangiano 16y ago
I believe that prison for non-violent crimes is an absolutely antiquate concept and it doesn't belong to a modern society. There are far more effective ways to prevent crime and educate people. How much good could be done for society if we had millions of people doing community work instead of being imprisoned? But I'm afraid society is not ready yet for such a liberal stance, and there are powerful interests working against it as well (think private prisons).
- baddox 16y ago
  I agree, although it would be important to define "violent" in some formal way. Is theft through fraud violence? What about inciting others to violence?
  - pjscott 16y ago
    One possible hack you could try is defining three categories: 1. Definitely violent crimes, like stabbing someone and taking his wallet. 2. Definitely non-violent crimes, like selling illegal drugs. 3. Crimes we're not entirely sure about. If you imprison people whose crimes fall in this category, they should only go to prisons with other people in this category. Of course nothing is a perfect solution here, but I think this might be a helpful way of thinking about it.
    - baddox 16y ago
      Perhaps it's best to say we shouldn't have prison sentences for victim-less crimes. That way, we can clearly identify drug possession or dealing as victim-less, and fraud clearly has victims. Of course, at that point, you can easily argue that "victim-less crimes" shouldn't be crimes at all. Some sort of exception would have to be made for simple stuff like traffic/parking violations.
      - wtallis 16y ago
        Traffic and parking crimes have victims, they're just not easy to identify. When you make crazy maneuvers on a highway without signalling and trigger a traffic jam that persists for two hours, you have quite a few victims, all affected in minor ways, but it adds up. Parking violations do not always have victims, but clearly you shouldn't be off the hook just because you got lucky that nobody handicapped showed up to find you had taken the spot reserved for people like them. We don't need any special exceptions in order to keep those violations in the same category as fraud.
hugh3 16y ago
I thought "Wow, only $37,000 for a three-year sentence? I thought it cost more than that per year!" But apparently I was looking at California standards. Compare: http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=MO http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=MO average cost per inmate $16K to http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=CA http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=CA average cost per inmate $45K. At the extremes, New York pays $55K per prisoner and Montana just $11K. This is insane. It looks like California should be looking at solving its budget problems by outsourcing its prisons to Montana. This would save approximately four billion dollars a year.
- lliiffee 16y ago
  I believe Schwarzenegger wants to do exactly that, but has been prevented by prison guard unions.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    I don't care much for the jailers, but what about the families of inmates who might want to visit them? Will they be forced to travel out of state? Couldn't denying someone visitors be construed as cruel and unusual punishment?
    - helveticaman 16y ago
      You can probably subsidize the travel with part of the savings.
      - chris11 16y ago
        Won't happen.I think it would be horrible politically to offer vacations to families with members in jail, no matter how much was saved.
    - lliiffee 16y ago
      Good point! Theoretically, you could have Montana come and run a prison in California. Of course, that would never be allowed, for the same reasons that it costs so much to house prisoners in California now...
ewjordan 16y ago
This is actually a bit more interesting than merely providing judges with the costs. FTFA: The concept is simple: fill in an offender’s conviction code, criminal history and other background, and the program spits out a range of recommended sentences, new statistical information about the likelihood that Missouri criminals with similar profiles (and the sentences they received) might commit more crimes, and the various options’ price tags. The fact that the system actually gives info about likelihood of committing future crimes is pretty neat, if it's done well. This is one of the first practical moves I've seen towards data-driven sentencing, and if it spreads and grows, it could be the start of a major tidal shift in our entire philosophy of criminal justice.
- Someone 16y ago
  Are you suggesting that people should be judged on the probability that they might commit more crimes in the future, that is, for crimes they have not committed?
  - jerf 16y ago
    They already are, by the ultimate opaque system, semi-random collections of human brains. Recall all the senses of the word "judge", after all; judges certainly take that into account as part of their human decisions. This is more transparent and more subject to validation and verification. Are you sure you think this is actually a step backward?
    - Someone 16y ago
      I did not say so, but I do think this is a road to hell, paved with good intentions. 'Minority Report' is on that road. Judges may sometimes or often be biased, but, institutionalizing that is IMO a step too far. Having said that, I think there is gray area; for example, I do not believe in the British "if it's murder, it must be life in prison", and I do think that sentences like "follow this anger management course or go to prison for three months" can be based on statistics of repeat offending.
    - anigbrowl 16y ago
abalashov 16y ago
Hey, if there is a practical incentive for judges to incarcerate less people in this psychotic, off-the-deep-end "justice" system where almost nobody who is incarcerated long-term should be, I'm all for it. Whatever it takes. On the other hand, I am intensely wary of formulations like this: "The imprisonment of X will cost taxpayers $YYY,YYY over his lifetime." That sounds awfully similar to posters for the Nazi Aktion T4 euthanasia program, e.g. "This mental invalid costs the Reich 60,000 marks over his lifetime. Do the merciful thing... it's your money." There has got to be a more delicate way to put that.

13 points by raheemm 16y ago

I wonder if the algorithm includes the taxes that people won't be paying due to sentences. That could get really complicated. For example, having a felony conviction on your record probably hugely reduces lifetime incomes. For certain people, the lost taxes might be much larger than the "direct" costs.

eli 16y ago
I doubt it. It's rare politicians consider costs past the next budget year.
hugh3 16y ago
If we can predict that, shouldn't we also be estimating the cost of the crimes they won't be committing? A burglar maybe steals $52,000 worth of stuff every year, and it winds up being worthwhile locking him up. But a child rapist has no major impact on economic productivity, so... yeah, I'm starting to see the problem with this mercenary approach to sentencing.
- lliiffee 16y ago
  If we are committed to the mercenary approach, we would have to define how bad a murder is "in dollars". If you think we should be focused on justice instead of a cold cost-benefit analysis, may I suggest defining how valuable justice is, in dollars? (I'm joking, I think...)
  - matwood 16y ago
    You mean putting a dollar number on a human life? This is done everyday by actuaries primarily for insurance purposes.
    - lliiffee 16y ago
      I meant that I was joking about putting a dollar number on "justice". Although, I'm not sure how unreasonable that is.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Whatever dollar value may be put on a human life for insurance purposes it's not an actual value. For instance, I can't pay that amount and then kill you.
- ewjordan 16y ago
  I'll respond out of order: But a child rapist has no major impact on economic productivity, so... yeah, I'm starting to see the problem with this mercenary approach to sentencing. This is almost trivial to account for, though, as long as you have a person looking at the numbers and making a decision - even if a judge sees that there's a large price tag if he sentences a child rapist, he's still going to do it, because the monetary value equivalent to "letting a child rapist back out into the world" is going to be ridiculously high, probably on the order of many millions of dollars. Same thing for other very serious crimes. Where it gets more interesting is cases like "college kid caught carrying eight pounds of marijuana", where there's no clear and present threat to anyone if the kid was given some sort of reduced sentence. If we can predict that, shouldn't we also be estimating the cost of the crimes they won't be committing? Sure, why not? In theory we lock people up because it helps society, right? So why wouldn't we want to consider all the possible higher order effects of different sentences on society as a whole? The problem is mainly that figuring out these effects can be very difficult, and I suspect that some of the second and third order effects end up being comparable in magnitude to the first order ones (direct cost of sentencing). Plus, in many cases we're really locking people up to satisfy a thirst for vengeance, not necessarily to help society in any way whatsoever. It would be nice if we had a better measure of what it actually costs us, though.
- philk 16y ago
  It's not going to be used that crudely. The child rapist is going to get a hefty sentence regardless of the cost because people want to punish serious crimes more than they want to save a couple of bucks. Where it does come in handy is for relatively minor crimes[1], serving as a spur to consider whether the cost of incarceration is really offset by the benefits to society. [1] Things like drug offenses, etc.

acangiano 16y ago

I believe that prison for non-violent crimes is an absolutely antiquate concept and it doesn't belong to a modern society. There are far more effective ways to prevent crime and educate people. How much good could be done for society if we had millions of people doing community work instead of being imprisoned? But I'm afraid society is not ready yet for such a liberal stance, and there are powerful interests working against it as well (think private prisons).

baddox 16y ago
I agree, although it would be important to define "violent" in some formal way. Is theft through fraud violence? What about inciting others to violence?
- pjscott 16y ago
  One possible hack you could try is defining three categories: 1. Definitely violent crimes, like stabbing someone and taking his wallet. 2. Definitely non-violent crimes, like selling illegal drugs. 3. Crimes we're not entirely sure about. If you imprison people whose crimes fall in this category, they should only go to prisons with other people in this category. Of course nothing is a perfect solution here, but I think this might be a helpful way of thinking about it.
  - baddox 16y ago
    Perhaps it's best to say we shouldn't have prison sentences for victim-less crimes. That way, we can clearly identify drug possession or dealing as victim-less, and fraud clearly has victims. Of course, at that point, you can easily argue that "victim-less crimes" shouldn't be crimes at all. Some sort of exception would have to be made for simple stuff like traffic/parking violations.
    - wtallis 16y ago
      Traffic and parking crimes have victims, they're just not easy to identify. When you make crazy maneuvers on a highway without signalling and trigger a traffic jam that persists for two hours, you have quite a few victims, all affected in minor ways, but it adds up. Parking violations do not always have victims, but clearly you shouldn't be off the hook just because you got lucky that nobody handicapped showed up to find you had taken the spot reserved for people like them. We don't need any special exceptions in order to keep those violations in the same category as fraud.

hugh3 16y ago

I thought "Wow, only $37,000 for a three-year sentence? I thought it cost more than that per year!" But apparently I was looking at California standards. Compare: http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=MO http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=MO average cost per inmate $16K to http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=CA http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=CA average cost per inmate $45K. At the extremes, New York pays $55K per prisoner and Montana just $11K. This is insane. It looks like California should be looking at solving its budget problems by outsourcing its prisons to Montana. This would save approximately four billion dollars a year.

lliiffee 16y ago
I believe Schwarzenegger wants to do exactly that, but has been prevented by prison guard unions.
- mahmud 16y ago
  I don't care much for the jailers, but what about the families of inmates who might want to visit them? Will they be forced to travel out of state? Couldn't denying someone visitors be construed as cruel and unusual punishment?
  - helveticaman 16y ago
    You can probably subsidize the travel with part of the savings.
    - chris11 16y ago
      Won't happen.I think it would be horrible politically to offer vacations to families with members in jail, no matter how much was saved.
  - lliiffee 16y ago
    Good point! Theoretically, you could have Montana come and run a prison in California. Of course, that would never be allowed, for the same reasons that it costs so much to house prisoners in California now...

ewjordan 16y ago

This is actually a bit more interesting than merely providing judges with the costs. FTFA: The concept is simple: fill in an offender’s conviction code, criminal history and other background, and the program spits out a range of recommended sentences, new statistical information about the likelihood that Missouri criminals with similar profiles (and the sentences they received) might commit more crimes, and the various options’ price tags. The fact that the system actually gives info about likelihood of committing future crimes is pretty neat, if it's done well. This is one of the first practical moves I've seen towards data-driven sentencing, and if it spreads and grows, it could be the start of a major tidal shift in our entire philosophy of criminal justice.

Someone 16y ago
Are you suggesting that people should be judged on the probability that they might commit more crimes in the future, that is, for crimes they have not committed?
- jerf 16y ago
  They already are, by the ultimate opaque system, semi-random collections of human brains. Recall all the senses of the word "judge", after all; judges certainly take that into account as part of their human decisions. This is more transparent and more subject to validation and verification. Are you sure you think this is actually a step backward?
  - Someone 16y ago
    I did not say so, but I do think this is a road to hell, paved with good intentions. 'Minority Report' is on that road. Judges may sometimes or often be biased, but, institutionalizing that is IMO a step too far. Having said that, I think there is gray area; for example, I do not believe in the British "if it's murder, it must be life in prison", and I do think that sentences like "follow this anger management course or go to prison for three months" can be based on statistics of repeat offending.
  - anigbrowl 16y ago

abalashov 16y ago

Hey, if there is a practical incentive for judges to incarcerate less people in this psychotic, off-the-deep-end "justice" system where almost nobody who is incarcerated long-term should be, I'm all for it. Whatever it takes. On the other hand, I am intensely wary of formulations like this: "The imprisonment of X will cost taxpayers $YYY,YYY over his lifetime." That sounds awfully similar to posters for the Nazi Aktion T4 euthanasia program, e.g. "This mental invalid costs the Reich 60,000 marks over his lifetime. Do the merciful thing... it's your money." There has got to be a more delicate way to put that.