4 ms·

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 co

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...
      - markdown 6y ago
        > don't forget housing If housing is that high, it's because there's corruption somewhere. You put up a prison building and it should stand for 50 years with not that much maintenance. Housing should be the lowest cost of all. > 4.4-to-1 That's absurd! Only the most hard to handle convicts would need such a ratio. Easily fixed by separating prisoners into different prisons based on the crime, likelihood of violence, medical conditions, etc. These are all costs that could be easily reduced if the US wasn't so corrupt.
        gruez 6y ago
        >If housing is that high, it's because there's corruption somewhere. You put up a prison building and it should stand for 50 years with not that much maintenance. Housing should be the lowest cost of all. Building a prison isn't the same as building a bunch of suburban houses with white picket fences. It has to be secure from breakout attempts. Since it's a self-contained facility you also need to build the support structures (eg. dining hall, rec area, admin offices, etc.) as well. >Easily fixed by separating prisoners into different prisons based on the crime, likelihood of violence, medical conditions, etc. They already do that. Ever heard of maximum/medium/low security prisons? >These are all costs that could be easily reduced if the US wasn't so corrupt. Can you present some figures here, other than just blindly asserting that it must be corruption?
    - eyelidlessness 6y ago
      This is one of the most disturbing things I’ve read in a long time. > Well either it's achievable, or your minimum wage is so grossly low that you have much bigger problems than the costs of incarceration. This is pretty widely recognized as the case for anyone not ideologically predisposed to reject the basic arithmetic involved. > 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). Even by the actual reality of prison standards, that’s abusive. What about medical and mental health costs? What about even meager efforts of rehabilitation? Are the guards actual professionals trained to keep the inmates safe (from one another, other guards)? > Economies of scale bring the per-prisoner cost all the way down. This is bonkers!!! Why are we talking about economies of scale at all? Our goal should be to eliminate the need to house people in bondage against their will, not to reap the economic benefits of increasing their numbers.
usefulcat 6y ago
> 1. What do you think would be an appropriate per-inmate budget? A better question is, exactly how is that $500k being spent? > 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? $$ cost, corruption, and 'human toll' are all concerns, and in this case may well be related. Of those 3, $$ cost is the easiest to measure. If your goal is to solve any or all of the above problems, investigating $$ cost is likely to be the most tractable approach.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  > A better question is, exactly how is that $500k being spent? Why is that a better question? What would your ideal $500k spend to incarcerate someone be? > $$ cost, corruption, and 'human toll' are all concerns, and in this case may well be related. Of those 3, $$ cost is the easiest to measure. Only because the people in cages are treated as budgets instead of human beings.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    > Why is that a better question? The average household income in the US is about $88,000. The average household size is about 2.5 people. So the average person in the US is maintained on about $35,000 per year. This doesn’t include the reduction due to taxes, but in principle on average the reduction in taxes is returned back in the form of the average government spending per person, so we can call that a wash. The fact that it is more than 14 times more expensive to maintain a person in prison vs out of prison is immediately suspicious.
    - eyelidlessness 6y ago
      The average person isn’t being held in a cage against their will, explicitly a charge of society, ostensibly for the purpose of rehabilitation, and widely understood to be under heightened threat of violence.
      - 6y ago

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...
    - markdown 6y ago
      > don't forget housing If housing is that high, it's because there's corruption somewhere. You put up a prison building and it should stand for 50 years with not that much maintenance. Housing should be the lowest cost of all. > 4.4-to-1 That's absurd! Only the most hard to handle convicts would need such a ratio. Easily fixed by separating prisoners into different prisons based on the crime, likelihood of violence, medical conditions, etc. These are all costs that could be easily reduced if the US wasn't so corrupt.
      - gruez 6y ago
        >If housing is that high, it's because there's corruption somewhere. You put up a prison building and it should stand for 50 years with not that much maintenance. Housing should be the lowest cost of all. Building a prison isn't the same as building a bunch of suburban houses with white picket fences. It has to be secure from breakout attempts. Since it's a self-contained facility you also need to build the support structures (eg. dining hall, rec area, admin offices, etc.) as well. >Easily fixed by separating prisoners into different prisons based on the crime, likelihood of violence, medical conditions, etc. They already do that. Ever heard of maximum/medium/low security prisons? >These are all costs that could be easily reduced if the US wasn't so corrupt. Can you present some figures here, other than just blindly asserting that it must be corruption?
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    This is one of the most disturbing things I’ve read in a long time. > Well either it's achievable, or your minimum wage is so grossly low that you have much bigger problems than the costs of incarceration. This is pretty widely recognized as the case for anyone not ideologically predisposed to reject the basic arithmetic involved. > 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). Even by the actual reality of prison standards, that’s abusive. What about medical and mental health costs? What about even meager efforts of rehabilitation? Are the guards actual professionals trained to keep the inmates safe (from one another, other guards)? > Economies of scale bring the per-prisoner cost all the way down. This is bonkers!!! Why are we talking about economies of scale at all? Our goal should be to eliminate the need to house people in bondage against their will, not to reap the economic benefits of increasing their numbers.

usefulcat 6y ago

> 1. What do you think would be an appropriate per-inmate budget? A better question is, exactly how is that $500k being spent? > 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? $$ cost, corruption, and 'human toll' are all concerns, and in this case may well be related. Of those 3, $$ cost is the easiest to measure. If your goal is to solve any or all of the above problems, investigating $$ cost is likely to be the most tractable approach.

eyelidlessness 6y ago
> A better question is, exactly how is that $500k being spent? Why is that a better question? What would your ideal $500k spend to incarcerate someone be? > $$ cost, corruption, and 'human toll' are all concerns, and in this case may well be related. Of those 3, $$ cost is the easiest to measure. Only because the people in cages are treated as budgets instead of human beings.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  > Why is that a better question? The average household income in the US is about $88,000. The average household size is about 2.5 people. So the average person in the US is maintained on about $35,000 per year. This doesn’t include the reduction due to taxes, but in principle on average the reduction in taxes is returned back in the form of the average government spending per person, so we can call that a wash. The fact that it is more than 14 times more expensive to maintain a person in prison vs out of prison is immediately suspicious.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    The average person isn’t being held in a cage against their will, explicitly a charge of society, ostensibly for the purpose of rehabilitation, and widely understood to be under heightened threat of violence.
    - 6y ago