6 ms·

That kind of money is hard to spend per person unless we have institutionalized corruption somewhere in there. How do we begin to tackle this problem?

hayst4ck 6y ago
I suspect the first thing that's needed is a publicly accessible breakdown of public spending. Really quickly I imagine it would be clear what needs to be explained or not. https://council.nyc.gov/budget/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2020/03/072-DOC.pdf https://council.nyc.gov/budget/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2... This looks like a good place to start Jail Operations: $1.1 billion Operations -Rikers Security & Operations: $37.1 million Operations -Infrastructure & Environmental Health: $41.1 million Health and Programs: $48.7million Operations -Hospital Prison Ward: $13.7 million Administration -Academy & Training: $17.7 million Administration -Management & Administration: $97.4 million After spending a while with wikipedia going through citations and some other things I arrived at: https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/nyc-department-of-correction/ https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/nyc-department-of-correc... You can see a department of corrections cost which is roughly the first document divided by incarcerated individuals, as well as an additional cost which is almost double the Department of Corrections cost, which is stated as: Fringe Benefits, Pensions, and Medical Services If I had to make a guess Pensions seem pretty suspicious. On this website: https://www.seethroughny.net/pensions/126507913 https://www.seethroughny.net/pensions/126507913 2019 DOC pensions results in: 13,619 Results Total: $582,352,875 Here we can see "fringe" benefits: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/jointheboldest/officer/salary-benefits.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/jointheboldest/officer/salary-bene... So working staff from the original document is 9,714, 600mil is pensions for 13.5k people, leaving something like 1.8 bil for those 9,714 employees, facilities, programs, training, etc. Which is roughly 185k per person. That doesn't seem too terribly outrageous to me. Why are there so many staff despite decreasing jail population seems like the most pressing question, but nothing I've read so far shouts outrageous corruption.
- fallingknife 6y ago
  They are paying pensions for 13.5K people, but only have 10K employees?
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    A Google search shows that Corrections in NYC receives pension benefits after 20 years, or 22 years if employed after April 1, 2012. Life expectancies are pretty long these days and 20 years is not all that long.
  - hayst4ck 6y ago
    I think I misunderstood pensions. I suppose it is much more like a 401k, so when it says pension, that's probably almost exactly a 401k deposit except to NYSCR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Common_Retirement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Common_Retireme... Guess these things are rather hard to understand as a financial layman. I don't know which interpretation is correct, or if something else is more correct.
    - socialist_coder 6y ago
      A pension pays you a fixed rate per year until you die. Very different from a 401k. And that is why all these government entities have such hefty pension responsibilities. It seems absolutely stupid. Like, just do the math. What did these people think were going to happen 50 years down the road?
      - jfengel 6y ago
        For a number of years, it was a tactic for resolving impasses between labor and management. Labor would accept a lower salary in exchange for a pension -- funded by expected growth rather than an investment account. Everybody wins. Workers get a safe retirement. Management gets to hold the line on salaries. Oops. It might even have worked, if growth had continued the way it did in the 50s and 60s, where there was often 5% GDP growth. Then came the 80s. Things have leveled off at a reasonable 2% growth, but that's not enough to support all of these pensions. But the pension plans were promises, and not contingent on that. So it's not quite as stupid as it sounded. But it's still pretty stupid. Everybody thought they were taking advantage of the other side.
sriku 6y ago
Yes it does seem way off the mark. Seems better to give the money to the individuals on promise of turning around their lives .. in non-violent cases. (I'm not totally serious here, just expressing that some/most criminals may choose to turn around their lives given funds like that.)
- rhodozelia 6y ago
  Commit a non violent crime and get 500k? Where do I sign up
Gustomaximus 6y ago
1) Open and easily assessible accounting and tendering. 2) Auditors having ability to remove procurement staff that show they miss obviously 'better pricing'. 3) Spend less. I've pondered why prisons dont set up colonial type towns in remote locations for less than maximum security prisoners. Make people work to provide their food and improve infrastructure. I imagine it would help develop many skills + better ready people to return to a world where they have to interact with people vs those high tension overcrowded prisons you see on TV. There'd still obviously be costs but you suspect something like this could be a massive per-prisoner cost.
- denkmoon 6y ago
  Move prisoners out into the wilderness so it's even harder for them to maintain social (familial) connections they will rely on once they leave the prison system. In an ideal world, maybe what you describe would work. In the punitive and unfair justice system that the US runs, you're just making prisoners' lives worse.
dyeje 6y ago
Ban for profit prisons, reduce the number of crimes that lead to incarceration.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- missedthecue 6y ago
  NYC has no for profit prisons
  - mbg721 6y ago
    Banning for-profit no-alternative services within the prisons would be meaningful, though.
TearsInTheRain 6y ago
Perhaps disburse government spending to various accounts on a blockchain via a stable dollar backed coin. All spending is now immutable and public
TrackerFF 6y ago
I suspect it's a bit like the defense industry, where a ¢5 screw turns into a $5 screw, after all the middle-men are done with it.
- JarlUlvi 6y ago
  I think you have been reading too much hogwash instead of reading actual government contracts to understand the basis of cost, and the system engineering, standards/requirements, testing, certification/validation that drive cost. Example: 1 screw from Home Depot vs. The contractor shall provide one screw similar to Aeronautical Standard AN500A416-6 Aeronautical Standard AN500A416-6, Machine Fastener Length: Between 0.344 inches and 0.375 inches Head Diameter: Between 0.389 inches and 0.414 inches Head Height: Between 0.161 inches and 0.170 inches Head Hole Configuration Style: Round Head Style: Fillister Hole Diameter: 0.046 inches Hole Quantity: 1 Internal Drive Style: Slot Min. Tensile Strength (psi): > 60000 pounds per square inch Thread Diameter: 0.250 inches Nondefinitive Specification/std Data: I type and 5s style Screw Material: Titanium 6Al-4V Screw Surface Treatment: Titanium 6Al-4V Thread Class: 2a Thread Direction: Right-hand Thread Length: Between 0.344 inches and 0.375 inches Thread Qty Per Inch (tpi): 20 Thread Series Designator: Unc (coarse thread) The contractor shall provide an indefinite quantity of between 1,000 and 1,000,000 units, not to exceed 10,000 per week, at Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
Admittedly I have a bias prompting these two questions, and I'm going to be upfront: I think incarceration in the US is intentionally punitive for profit and control, not responsive to any particular crime problem. That said... I'm not good at finance, and I mean these questions sincerely: 1. What do you think would be an appropriate per-inmate budget? 2. What parts of the existing budget do you think are corrupt and could be reformed? - - - Third question, because well, I already laid my bias cards on the table: Why is cost the concern? If there's rampant corruption in incarceration, why are you focused on the money spent and not the human toll of a corrupt prison system housing millions of human beings?
- markdown 6y ago
  > 1. What do you think would be an appropriate per-inmate budget? Due to economies of scale, less than the minimum wage per annum.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    Just so we’re clear, you think... housing and feeding and imprisoning and (I’m not gonna jump to conclusions about any other things you think are involved in keeping human beings in prison) should cost less than $15,000/year? If I’m understanding correctly, how do you think that’s achievable?
    - markdown 6y ago
      Well either it's achievable, or your minimum wage is so grossly low that you have much bigger problems than the costs of incarceration. You have people (mostly) locked in a building and you feed them 3 times a day. The biggest costs should be food, electricity, and labour (guards). Economies of scale bring the per-prisoner cost all the way down.
      - gruez 6y ago
        >You have people (mostly) locked in a building and you feed them 3 times a day. The biggest costs should be food, electricity, and labour (guards). don't forget housing, which makes up 40% of the CPI. You're also vastly underestimating the cost of labor. One article[1] cites the current inmate-to-staff ratio as 4.4-to-1, and that's considered high. I suspect that prison staff make far more than the minimum wage so I expect the staffing costs alone to cost more than the yearly minimum wage. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/09/01/too-many-inmates-too-few-correctional-officers-a-lethal-recipe-in-federal-prisons/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/09/0...
iamthemonster 6y ago
Spending that kind of money per prisoner is absolutely staggering. It is equivalent to: Each prisoner has their own $400 per night hotel room Each prisoner has all their meals in the hotel restaurant with a $50 budget for each of their three meals per day Each prisoner has $50 per day for sundries (toothpaste, uniforms etc) Each prisoner has their own 100% dedicated guard, assuming four shifts on a 7-day fortnight rotation whose payroll costs are 50% above USA median wage At the end of every single day, every prisoner celebrates by drinking a whole $100 bottle of champagne
- iamthemonster 6y ago
  Sorry for the formatting fail, here's a second try: Spending that kind of money per prisoner is absolutely staggering. It is equivalent to: > Each prisoner has their own $400 per night hotel room > Each prisoner has all their meals in the hotel restaurant with a $50 budget for each of their three meals per day > Each prisoner has $50 per day for sundries (toothpaste, uniforms etc) Each prisoner has their own 100% dedicated guard, assuming four shifts on a 7-day fortnight rotation whose payroll costs are 50% above USA median wage > At the end of every single day, every prisoner celebrates by drinking a whole $100 bottle of champagne
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  ...I wonder how many prisoners you could save money on by telling them if they stay in the local Marriott and don't leave ever, the government will pay all their bills. Heck, I'd take that deal.
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    If you actually did that you would induce a much higher number of prisoners, so I’m not sure we can make that kind of comparison since the costs would quickly become unmanageable.
mbg721 6y ago
Burn it to the ground and start over? In a world designed to divide us, everyone agrees that US politics is broken, ans massive corruption is the reason why.

hayst4ck 6y ago

I suspect the first thing that's needed is a publicly accessible breakdown of public spending. Really quickly I imagine it would be clear what needs to be explained or not. https://council.nyc.gov/budget/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2020/03/072-DOC.pdf https://council.nyc.gov/budget/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2... This looks like a good place to start Jail Operations: $1.1 billion Operations -Rikers Security & Operations: $37.1 million Operations -Infrastructure & Environmental Health: $41.1 million Health and Programs: $48.7million Operations -Hospital Prison Ward: $13.7 million Administration -Academy & Training: $17.7 million Administration -Management & Administration: $97.4 million After spending a while with wikipedia going through citations and some other things I arrived at: https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/nyc-department-of-correction/ https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/nyc-department-of-correc... You can see a department of corrections cost which is roughly the first document divided by incarcerated individuals, as well as an additional cost which is almost double the Department of Corrections cost, which is stated as: Fringe Benefits, Pensions, and Medical Services If I had to make a guess Pensions seem pretty suspicious. On this website: https://www.seethroughny.net/pensions/126507913 https://www.seethroughny.net/pensions/126507913 2019 DOC pensions results in: 13,619 Results Total: $582,352,875 Here we can see "fringe" benefits: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/jointheboldest/officer/salary-benefits.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/jointheboldest/officer/salary-bene... So working staff from the original document is 9,714, 600mil is pensions for 13.5k people, leaving something like 1.8 bil for those 9,714 employees, facilities, programs, training, etc. Which is roughly 185k per person. That doesn't seem too terribly outrageous to me. Why are there so many staff despite decreasing jail population seems like the most pressing question, but nothing I've read so far shouts outrageous corruption.

fallingknife 6y ago
They are paying pensions for 13.5K people, but only have 10K employees?
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  A Google search shows that Corrections in NYC receives pension benefits after 20 years, or 22 years if employed after April 1, 2012. Life expectancies are pretty long these days and 20 years is not all that long.
- hayst4ck 6y ago
  I think I misunderstood pensions. I suppose it is much more like a 401k, so when it says pension, that's probably almost exactly a 401k deposit except to NYSCR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Common_Retirement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Common_Retireme... Guess these things are rather hard to understand as a financial layman. I don't know which interpretation is correct, or if something else is more correct.
  - socialist_coder 6y ago
    A pension pays you a fixed rate per year until you die. Very different from a 401k. And that is why all these government entities have such hefty pension responsibilities. It seems absolutely stupid. Like, just do the math. What did these people think were going to happen 50 years down the road?
    - jfengel 6y ago
      For a number of years, it was a tactic for resolving impasses between labor and management. Labor would accept a lower salary in exchange for a pension -- funded by expected growth rather than an investment account. Everybody wins. Workers get a safe retirement. Management gets to hold the line on salaries. Oops. It might even have worked, if growth had continued the way it did in the 50s and 60s, where there was often 5% GDP growth. Then came the 80s. Things have leveled off at a reasonable 2% growth, but that's not enough to support all of these pensions. But the pension plans were promises, and not contingent on that. So it's not quite as stupid as it sounded. But it's still pretty stupid. Everybody thought they were taking advantage of the other side.

sriku 6y ago

Yes it does seem way off the mark. Seems better to give the money to the individuals on promise of turning around their lives .. in non-violent cases. (I'm not totally serious here, just expressing that some/most criminals may choose to turn around their lives given funds like that.)

rhodozelia 6y ago
Commit a non violent crime and get 500k? Where do I sign up

Gustomaximus 6y ago

1) Open and easily assessible accounting and tendering. 2) Auditors having ability to remove procurement staff that show they miss obviously 'better pricing'. 3) Spend less. I've pondered why prisons dont set up colonial type towns in remote locations for less than maximum security prisoners. Make people work to provide their food and improve infrastructure. I imagine it would help develop many skills + better ready people to return to a world where they have to interact with people vs those high tension overcrowded prisons you see on TV. There'd still obviously be costs but you suspect something like this could be a massive per-prisoner cost.

denkmoon 6y ago
Move prisoners out into the wilderness so it's even harder for them to maintain social (familial) connections they will rely on once they leave the prison system. In an ideal world, maybe what you describe would work. In the punitive and unfair justice system that the US runs, you're just making prisoners' lives worse.

dyeje 6y ago

Ban for profit prisons, reduce the number of crimes that lead to incarceration.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
missedthecue 6y ago
NYC has no for profit prisons
- mbg721 6y ago
  Banning for-profit no-alternative services within the prisons would be meaningful, though.

TearsInTheRain 6y ago

Perhaps disburse government spending to various accounts on a blockchain via a stable dollar backed coin. All spending is now immutable and public

TrackerFF 6y ago

I suspect it's a bit like the defense industry, where a ¢5 screw turns into a $5 screw, after all the middle-men are done with it.

JarlUlvi 6y ago
I think you have been reading too much hogwash instead of reading actual government contracts to understand the basis of cost, and the system engineering, standards/requirements, testing, certification/validation that drive cost. Example: 1 screw from Home Depot vs. The contractor shall provide one screw similar to Aeronautical Standard AN500A416-6 Aeronautical Standard AN500A416-6, Machine Fastener Length: Between 0.344 inches and 0.375 inches Head Diameter: Between 0.389 inches and 0.414 inches Head Height: Between 0.161 inches and 0.170 inches Head Hole Configuration Style: Round Head Style: Fillister Hole Diameter: 0.046 inches Hole Quantity: 1 Internal Drive Style: Slot Min. Tensile Strength (psi): > 60000 pounds per square inch Thread Diameter: 0.250 inches Nondefinitive Specification/std Data: I type and 5s style Screw Material: Titanium 6Al-4V Screw Surface Treatment: Titanium 6Al-4V Thread Class: 2a Thread Direction: Right-hand Thread Length: Between 0.344 inches and 0.375 inches Thread Qty Per Inch (tpi): 20 Thread Series Designator: Unc (coarse thread) The contractor shall provide an indefinite quantity of between 1,000 and 1,000,000 units, not to exceed 10,000 per week, at Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

Admittedly I have a bias prompting these two questions, and I'm going to be upfront: I think incarceration in the US is intentionally punitive for profit and control, not responsive to any particular crime problem. That said... I'm not good at finance, and I mean these questions sincerely: 1. What do you think would be an appropriate per-inmate budget? 2. What parts of the existing budget do you think are corrupt and could be reformed? - - - Third question, because well, I already laid my bias cards on the table: Why is cost the concern? If there's rampant corruption in incarceration, why are you focused on the money spent and not the human toll of a corrupt prison system housing millions of human beings?

markdown 6y ago
> 1. What do you think would be an appropriate per-inmate budget? Due to economies of scale, less than the minimum wage per annum.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Just so we’re clear, you think... housing and feeding and imprisoning and (I’m not gonna jump to conclusions about any other things you think are involved in keeping human beings in prison) should cost less than $15,000/year? If I’m understanding correctly, how do you think that’s achievable?
  - markdown 6y ago
    Well either it's achievable, or your minimum wage is so grossly low that you have much bigger problems than the costs of incarceration. You have people (mostly) locked in a building and you feed them 3 times a day. The biggest costs should be food, electricity, and labour (guards). Economies of scale bring the per-prisoner cost all the way down.
    - gruez 6y ago
      >You have people (mostly) locked in a building and you feed them 3 times a day. The biggest costs should be food, electricity, and labour (guards). don't forget housing, which makes up 40% of the CPI. You're also vastly underestimating the cost of labor. One article[1] cites the current inmate-to-staff ratio as 4.4-to-1, and that's considered high. I suspect that prison staff make far more than the minimum wage so I expect the staffing costs alone to cost more than the yearly minimum wage. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/09/01/too-many-inmates-too-few-correctional-officers-a-lethal-recipe-in-federal-prisons/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/09/0...

iamthemonster 6y ago

Spending that kind of money per prisoner is absolutely staggering. It is equivalent to: Each prisoner has their own $400 per night hotel room Each prisoner has all their meals in the hotel restaurant with a $50 budget for each of their three meals per day Each prisoner has $50 per day for sundries (toothpaste, uniforms etc) Each prisoner has their own 100% dedicated guard, assuming four shifts on a 7-day fortnight rotation whose payroll costs are 50% above USA median wage At the end of every single day, every prisoner celebrates by drinking a whole $100 bottle of champagne

iamthemonster 6y ago
Sorry for the formatting fail, here's a second try: Spending that kind of money per prisoner is absolutely staggering. It is equivalent to: > Each prisoner has their own $400 per night hotel room > Each prisoner has all their meals in the hotel restaurant with a $50 budget for each of their three meals per day > Each prisoner has $50 per day for sundries (toothpaste, uniforms etc) Each prisoner has their own 100% dedicated guard, assuming four shifts on a 7-day fortnight rotation whose payroll costs are 50% above USA median wage > At the end of every single day, every prisoner celebrates by drinking a whole $100 bottle of champagne
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
...I wonder how many prisoners you could save money on by telling them if they stay in the local Marriott and don't leave ever, the government will pay all their bills. Heck, I'd take that deal.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  If you actually did that you would induce a much higher number of prisoners, so I’m not sure we can make that kind of comparison since the costs would quickly become unmanageable.

mbg721 6y ago

Burn it to the ground and start over? In a world designed to divide us, everyone agrees that US politics is broken, ans massive corruption is the reason why.