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Another interpretation: Prison inmates have an easier life than the poor and free. Of course, the potential for violence from other inmates is always there, b
by grannyg00se 15y ago
Another interpretation: Prison inmates have an easier life than the poor and free.
Of course, the potential for violence from other inmates is always there, but I suspect that is not a serious problem in most prisons. And the potential for violence from a random citizen in the street is relatively high in poorer areas.
Overall, prison may be a better alternative to severe urban poverty. This may be another reason why the poor are much more likely to face incarceration. Not only does their plight cause them to suffer a lack of alternatives, but the punishment for crime doesn't look so bad to them.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- thirdusername 15y agoFunny you should say that. Marginal revolution cited a paper (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/demography/summary/v047/47.3.patterson.html http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/demography/summary/v047/47.3.pa...) the other day, that supports your point, from the abstract: Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics and Census Bureau, I estimate death rates of working-age prisoners and nonprisoners by sex and race. Incarceration was more detrimental to females in comparison to their male counterparts in the period covered by this study. White male prisoners had higher death rates than white males who were not in prison. Black male prisoners, however, consistently exhibited lower death rates than black male nonprisoners did.
- phren0logy 15y agoHaving provided health care in an incarceration setting, I don't think that was the right conclusion to draw. The article notes this man had never been incarcerated before. I imagine that his ignorance of incarcerated life may have been a factor. I met only a tiny handful of people who told me they preferred life in incarceration to poverty (though, of course, that was not pleasant either).