5 ms·

It costs $438k to jail one person for one year at Rikers Island

49 points by hhs 5y ago

jzb 5y ago
The saddest part is that, if presented with this information (cost), a substantial portion of the U.S. populace would declare that we are treating prisoners too well and that we need to find new ways to charge people for being incarcerated. What it won't do: Convince people that we need to reform prisons and jail fewer people.
- newbamboo 5y ago
  In all fairness homicide is increasing at a pretty good clip. Now is not the time to decrease incarceration. We should get serious in preventing crime, but the current administration is going in the opposite direction hence the trend in homicide.
  - chirau 5y ago
    Do you seriously think that most people in jail are there for homicide?
    - newbamboo 5y ago
      Most that are locked up for homicide have prior convictions for non-homicide. Keeping them in prison prevents homicide from happening in the first place. Better for them, better for society to keep them out of harms way.
      - csh0 5y ago
        Just to clarify, are you suggesting that if you commit some crime, any crime, then you should be locked up for good on the basis that you might become a murderer at some undetermined point in the future. Seems like an error in reasoning here: If you are a murderer, then you have priors. You have a prior, therefore you are/will become a murderer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent aka the converse error.
        kadoban 5y ago
        Prison itself is certainly the cause of several murders as well. Prison ruins lives (that often weren't going optimally, to be fair), and people in bad situations do bad things.
        hiyer 5y ago
        "The vilest deeds, like poison weeds, bloom well in prison air. It is only what is good in man that wastes and withers there" - Oscar Wilde
  - sbelskie 5y ago
    The spike in homicide rates 100% began during the previous administration. I think that’s more happenstance than due to any particular policy decisions, but murder rates starting spiking in the summer of 2020.
    - silisili 5y ago
      Yeah, I don't think much matters or can be done at the federal level. One can be tough on crime, another lenient on crime, but it doesn't make a ton of difference because cities and states tend to do what they want. There was a definitive villainization and backing off of police nationwide that corresponds with the rise in crime. A lack of police action, coupled with COVID stressors, is a recipe for rising crime.
      - kennywinker 5y ago
        Three big things happened last year: covid 19, the defund the police movement that came as a result of the murder of george floyd, and a rise in murders. But you're arbitrarily linking those events. My belief is that the murder spike has nothing to do with the police, and everything to do with covid and the economy. Violent crime was already spiking before the george floyd murder, for one thing. Cops do very little that prevents murder, they mostly just arrest people after them, for another. But that's just as arbitrary as your interpretation. Without data, we're just making up stories.
    - newbamboo 5y ago
      https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/76-000-california-inmates-be-eligible-earlier-release-n1266044 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/76-000-california-inmat...
      - geofft 5y ago
        Can you explain, in your own words, how that responds to the point above? The post above claims that homicide rates started to go up "during the previous administration" (i.e., before January 2021) / "in the summer of 2020." The article you're linking is from May 2021, and talking about decarceration, not homicide rates. That seems like it cannot possibly be evidence for the claim that decarceration causes increased homicide rates.
  - joombaga 5y ago
    Is there evidence that avoiding a decrease in incarceration reduces homicide rates?
  - burkaman 5y ago
    Rikers is mostly pretrial defendants. There are no convicted murderers there.
  - jzb 5y ago
    This may shock you, but a lot of people aren't in jail for violent crimes - much less homicide. Drug offenses account for nearly half, according to <a href="https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp>this</a> https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen.... By all means, let's keep putting convicted murderers in prison. Arsonists, kidnappers, and a bunch of others. But we can probably forego a lot of drug offenses entirely.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      This is really, really misleading because you are looking only at Federal prisoners which is only ~10% of inmates (most being in state prisons). In the US, each state has its own penal code and things like murder or rape are generally not investigated or prosecuted by the Feds, so these prisoners do not end up in Federal prison. But drug trafficking that crosses state lines is, which is why drug traffickers (the vast majority of federal drug inmates are traffickers, not users) account for ~47% of Federal inmates. However just because they were convicted of drug trafficking doesn't mean they are non-violent offenders or did not commit any other crime. Moreover be aware that when you say "non-violent" crime, this includes things like breaking and entering, fraud, grand theft auto, bribery, witness tampering, etc. Very few people truly support not incarcerating a person because they only stole someone's life savings but didn't assault them. So what is the real data? It's tough to say because again each state has their own penal code and own statistics, but let's look at Texas: https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/documents/Statistical_Report_FY2019.pdf https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/documents/Statistical_Report_FY20... About 25% of those entering the correctional system Texas ("intakes") were convicted of a drug offense (see page 2 of the report), but because these offenders serve shorter sentences or are diverted out of prison, on average only 15% of the prison population at any point in time is there because of a drug offense (see page 10). Now I have no idea whether Texas is representative, perhaps other states are harsher on drug offenses, but I think it's safe to say that 15% is a reasonable upper bound.
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    The increase looks to me like a very small bump in comparison to the whole decade: https://dataunodc.un.org/content/data/homicide/homicide-rate https://dataunodc.un.org/content/data/homicide/homicide-rate During that time incarceration rate was mostly flat or slightly rising, so no.
  - geofft 5y ago
    That would be a reasonable argument if decreasing incarceration increased homicides. But, first, as you point out, homicides are already increasing despite our current strategy. That's enough reason to ask whether it's working. Second, when you leave prison, you don't have many good options. You haven't been working, and you will have trouble finding a job. You might have joined a gang while inside to keep yourself safe. If you didn't, you at least know people who did, who can offer you ways to meet your basic needs (food and shelter) and you might get involved with them. Or you might simply turn to crimes like armed robbery where your specific goal isn't killing someone - and then you do. Especially in reply to your comment downthread that it's worth locking people up for lesser crimes because some of them go on to commit homicide - that seems like a good demonstration that locking them up now doesn't prevent them from committing homicide later, and I would wager that a good fraction of them wouldn't commit homicide if they hadn't been locked up. Think about people who make $438K/year or even a bit less. Some of them are cool; many of them are terrible people - greedy, lazy (they might support themselves from investments or inheritances), rude and manipulative, entitled. Very few of them have any particular desire, motivation, or so much as occasion to commit homicide.
- gruez 5y ago
  >The saddest part is that, if presented with this information (cost), a substantial portion of the U.S. populace would declare that we are treating prisoners too well Do people actually believe this? AFAIK most of the cost isn't because of amnesties (ie. "treating prisoners too well"), it's because of the various staff/services/equipment to deal with the prisoners.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    I would be _shocked_ if less than 30% believe that or worse.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - goldcd 5y ago
    That cost is quite incredible - that's $36.5k a month. So maybe each month: $5k for the cell $5k for facilities $5k for dine dining $10k each for 2 personal guards @$5k $5k for healthcare costs $5k car and driver on standby for potential court appearances and maybe a $50 per diem for discretionary spending. If the above isn't the case, does make you wonder where it is going.
    - gruez 5y ago
      from TFA: >It costs $438,000 to jail one person there for one year. Of this $379,216 goes to personnel costs
- spectramax 5y ago
  Lot of discussion around here is knee jerk and not nuanced. Criminal law is complex and there are areas where it should be reformed and other areas where we need better enforcement. We've seen the criminal justice reform as they have instituted in San Francisco city: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27216343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27216343
  - crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
    Punishment has been shown to be ineffective and ignorant of ancestral/intergenerational trauma being passed epigenetically. This is a way we're societally creating trauma and poisoning our gene pool. It's literally suicidal, from a long-term perspective.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      > ancestral/intergenerational trauma being passed epigenetically Can you cite any sources for this?
      - crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
        https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00808/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.0080... This was the first thing that came up when I searched google for "epigenetic markers of trauma." It highlights childhood trauma. I'll go ahead and note that one aspect of incarceration culture is numerous children losing the presence of a caregiver. This is for sure a traumatic experience for many and a singular way the government is suicidal.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      You understand that you are literally pushing a form of Lysenkoism, right? There is no such thing as trauma being passed down epigenetically.
      - colinb 5y ago
        I think that this is less clear-cut than you might expect. [0] talks about "Dutch Hunger Winter Syndrome" as a heavily studied counterexample. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_inheritance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_i...
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > Convince people that we need to reform prisons and jail fewer people. Well, why should it convince people of that? Perhaps people are in fact being rational. When a necessary social role becomes expensive, it makes sense to make it cheaper, not to stop doing it. Are you going to get rid of courts because it costs so much to bring someone to trial? We have a large prison population because we have a large criminal class in this country. 5 homicides per 100K, 370 violet assaults per 100K. Those are committed every year. With these statistics, having ~400 prisoners per 100K is what you would expect, if not on the low side, since we haven't even started talking about non-violent crime. If you disagree, which of these do you think should not get jail time? Alternately, find a way to prevent crime.
  - jzb 5y ago
    "Alternately, find a way to prevent crime." Easy. Stop criminalizing use of drugs and sex work. End the bullshit "war on drugs." We have a huge criminal class in this country. Wage theft[1], for example, is a huge criminal enterprise but almost nothing is done to stop that. We could also start working on real gun control like other countries that don't have a huge firearm homicide problem. That won't mean we end homicides, of course, but it would reduce the problem. [1] https://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-costing-workers-hundreds/ https://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-costing-...
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      The problem with always thinking there are easy solutions is that you never solve anything. OK, we release all the drug traffickers who are only guilty of that and no other crimes. Congratulations, you've reduced the jail population by 5%. Oh wait, an even bigger group of people now fill the prisons, but for theft. Oops. But if we free all those millions of imprisoned sex workers, that will solve the problem, right? Lol. Now that you've done all the performative ineffectual stuff, you still have the expensive prisons to worry about and no fix. So what do you - change the subject and move on to provide a facile solution for some other problem? I thought so.
newbamboo 5y ago
Seems to make a good case for getting vaccinated. If this guy got vaccinated like he’s supposed to he would be alive and wouldn’t have cost the tax payer >400k. I understand medical freedom for the non-incarcerated, but come on!
EGreg 5y ago
Now imagine giving homeless people a home. Do you think it might actually be cheaper than jailing them for various crimes later? Utah has done just that and proven it can be, indeed: https://www.cc.com/video/lntv3q/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-the-homeless-homed https://www.cc.com/video/lntv3q/the-daily-show-with-jon-stew...
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  Can I have a house to prevent me from committing crimes later too?
  - thesagan 5y ago
    Doesn't have to be a house. Could be a small room. Like the old Odd Fellows society that used to offer housing to folks.
  - hkt 5y ago
    There are perfectly reasonable arguments for enshrining the right to decent housing in law, such that everyone would be entitled to it.
  - burkaman 5y ago
    Yes, if you're really homeless, I would like to help you find a home.
  - EGreg 5y ago
    If you are not homeless then you won’t be facing all that danger from attackers, go to the emergency room or be busted and jailed for some NIMBY laws to get the homeless out.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  Like a mental institution? Those have gone out of fashion since they were meanie with no alternative to offer for the ill. I don't buy that providing housing would solve the homeless crisis.
  - 5y ago
nikkinana 5y ago
Gotta love sheriff arpio he was a genius!
DominikPeters 5y ago
This paragraph is just incredible: > The misery at Rikers is not for lack of resources. The jail’s population fell by half between 2012 and 2020, yet its budget grew by 24%. It costs $438,000 to jail one person there for one year. Of this $379,216 goes to personnel costs; less than 5% goes to services like substance-abuse treatment. The average salary for guards, after five and half years on the job, is $92,073. In 2012, the ratio of inmates to officers in the city was 7:5. In 2020 it was 1.6 officers per inmate.
- gruez 5y ago
  For all the hate on private prisons (despite constituting only 8.1% of the US prison population), there seems to be surprisingly little hate for prison guard unions.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    Why? Prison/jail guards aren't the ones keeping prisons/jails stocked with people. Don't forget these are NYC salaries. $92k/year does not go very far there. The implication that prisons and jails are some kind of make-work operation for the guards is pretty vile.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >Why? Prison/jail guards aren't the ones keeping prisons/jails stocked with people. you could say the same for private prisons. in both cases they're incentivized to put more people away. for private prisons it's contract renewals, for guard unions it's job security. >Don't forget these are NYC salaries. $92k/year does not go very far there. >The implication that prisons and jails are some kind of make-work operation for the guards is pretty vile. Is it any more vile than the implication that private prisons and jails are make-work operation for the companies that operate them? It's also addressed in the article: "In 2012, the ratio of inmates to officers in the city was 7:5. In 2020 it was 1.6 officers per inmate.". What else would explain guard per inmate figure to more than double, from 0.71 to 1.6?
JasonFruit 5y ago
Cost aside, the U.S. have the largest government in history, and it's created the largest prison population in history. There's either something specially criminal about Americans, or else that huge government is occupying its excess capacity unjustly criminalizing its most vulnerable people.
- hkt 5y ago
  There is money to be made running private prisons - the fact is that there will without a doubt be a very strong pro-incarceration lobby in the US that will be highly successful at pushing an agenda which profits them.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I probably could argue that whole perversion in judicial and legislative system stems from political system. Harsh on crime gets votes. As such people increasing penalties or getting more people jailed get more votes. Thus increased pressure for such activities. As person who lives in country with 4 different elections(presidential, unicameral, municipal and EU) I find the amount of elected positions USA just bizarre. Specially voting for judges or sheriffs or prosecutors...
- nerdponx 5y ago
  I don't think the size of the prison system is causally related to the size of the government. The main cause as far as I can tell was a wave of drug addiction epidemics and crime in the 70s, leading to a "tough on crime" sentiment in the 80s that persists to this day. Also there's a huge industry around private companies supplying contract services to prisons (including "public" prisons). Not to mention the fact that prison labor is dirt cheap it is an explicit loophole in anti-slavery laws. Follow the money.
jimmygrapes 5y ago
Couldn't read past the pay wall, but if the above the fold bit tells the story the headline misses saying that this isn't the (implied) average cost per person, but the actuarial cost of a single person's medical care. Glad to be corrected by anyone with the full thing.
Tycho 5y ago
Yeah but how much money (and harm) is society saved by having criminals off the street?
- nerdponx 5y ago
  There is plenty of evidence to suggest that sending someone to prison might actually increase their likelihood to commit crimes in the future. You could get a much better ROI by reducing the circumstances that lead to criminality in the first place.
  - Tycho 5y ago
    How much of that involves just de-criminalising harmful acts so that the broader public bear the cost? For instance, SF declining to prosecute theft under the value of $900.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      Decriminalizing theft has substantial costs as well: https://abc7news.com/target-hours-san-francisco-walgreens-closing-sf-crime-near-me/10854900/ https://abc7news.com/target-hours-san-francisco-walgreens-cl... For those people laid off, they bear the cost, but they are not the only ones, and the economic costs are nowhere near the real costs. A friend of mine owns a coffee shop that was robbed -- he had video of the event, but the police couldn't do anything. But he knew the guy who did it -- a local meth-head who hangs around the area, and later he saw him and they got into a fight and he beat the guy up. Point being, when the police refuse to provide basic protection, people start turning to vigilante actions, private security, metal detectors or shopping by appointment only, etc. Or they flee to jurisdictions in which their livelihoods are protected by the police. That not only raises costs, but it changes the society as a whole. There is a reason that no society has survived that tolerated theft, and it has nothing to do with economic calculations.
      - nerdponx 5y ago
        > people start turning to vigilante actions, private security ...and organized crime, which leads to more crime and more criminality, not less.
hkt 5y ago
Prisons are a racket. I strongly suspect that regulatory and legislative capture are at play, and that this explains why the US has the (frankly, crazy) incarceration rates it has.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Half of all lobbying money raised to oppose cannabis legalization is from correctional workers unions. https://theintercept.com/2016/05/18/ca-marijuana-measure/ https://theintercept.com/2016/05/18/ca-marijuana-measure/
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Hold on there. The accurate statement is: "Roughly half of all the money raised to oppose one specific ballot initiative was from groups associated with police and prisons". Groups "associated with police and prisons" runs that gamut from thinks tanks that adopt a pro-police stance and obtain money from police unions to former law enforcement officials and anything in between. The article goes on to say that the Teamsters Union and Hospital Workers also opposed the initiative.
kennywinker 5y ago
It costs more to police and imprison people than it does to provide the social services (housing, food, medical care, transportation, dignity) that would keep people from harming society. Back when breaking bad was on the air there was a commonly repeated joke about "canadian breaking bad" where Walter White gets diagnosed with cancer and then gets treatment and never cooks meth. But it's not just a joke, it's real. And yet for a wide variety of reasons (many of which are incentivized by business) people would rather spend money to enforce and punish than to help and prevent.
crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
Such a high cost to remove people from society instead of help them learn to repair and meet their needs.

49 points by hhs 5y ago

jzb 5y ago

The saddest part is that, if presented with this information (cost), a substantial portion of the U.S. populace would declare that we are treating prisoners too well and that we need to find new ways to charge people for being incarcerated. What it won't do: Convince people that we need to reform prisons and jail fewer people.

newbamboo 5y ago
In all fairness homicide is increasing at a pretty good clip. Now is not the time to decrease incarceration. We should get serious in preventing crime, but the current administration is going in the opposite direction hence the trend in homicide.
- chirau 5y ago
  Do you seriously think that most people in jail are there for homicide?
  - newbamboo 5y ago
    Most that are locked up for homicide have prior convictions for non-homicide. Keeping them in prison prevents homicide from happening in the first place. Better for them, better for society to keep them out of harms way.
    - csh0 5y ago
      Just to clarify, are you suggesting that if you commit some crime, any crime, then you should be locked up for good on the basis that you might become a murderer at some undetermined point in the future. Seems like an error in reasoning here: If you are a murderer, then you have priors. You have a prior, therefore you are/will become a murderer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent aka the converse error.
      - kadoban 5y ago
        Prison itself is certainly the cause of several murders as well. Prison ruins lives (that often weren't going optimally, to be fair), and people in bad situations do bad things.
        hiyer 5y ago
        "The vilest deeds, like poison weeds, bloom well in prison air. It is only what is good in man that wastes and withers there" - Oscar Wilde
- sbelskie 5y ago
  The spike in homicide rates 100% began during the previous administration. I think that’s more happenstance than due to any particular policy decisions, but murder rates starting spiking in the summer of 2020.
  - silisili 5y ago
    Yeah, I don't think much matters or can be done at the federal level. One can be tough on crime, another lenient on crime, but it doesn't make a ton of difference because cities and states tend to do what they want. There was a definitive villainization and backing off of police nationwide that corresponds with the rise in crime. A lack of police action, coupled with COVID stressors, is a recipe for rising crime.
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      Three big things happened last year: covid 19, the defund the police movement that came as a result of the murder of george floyd, and a rise in murders. But you're arbitrarily linking those events. My belief is that the murder spike has nothing to do with the police, and everything to do with covid and the economy. Violent crime was already spiking before the george floyd murder, for one thing. Cops do very little that prevents murder, they mostly just arrest people after them, for another. But that's just as arbitrary as your interpretation. Without data, we're just making up stories.
  - newbamboo 5y ago
    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/76-000-california-inmates-be-eligible-earlier-release-n1266044 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/76-000-california-inmat...
    - geofft 5y ago
      Can you explain, in your own words, how that responds to the point above? The post above claims that homicide rates started to go up "during the previous administration" (i.e., before January 2021) / "in the summer of 2020." The article you're linking is from May 2021, and talking about decarceration, not homicide rates. That seems like it cannot possibly be evidence for the claim that decarceration causes increased homicide rates.
- joombaga 5y ago
  Is there evidence that avoiding a decrease in incarceration reduces homicide rates?
- burkaman 5y ago
  Rikers is mostly pretrial defendants. There are no convicted murderers there.
- jzb 5y ago
  This may shock you, but a lot of people aren't in jail for violent crimes - much less homicide. Drug offenses account for nearly half, according to <a href="https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp>this</a> https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen.... By all means, let's keep putting convicted murderers in prison. Arsonists, kidnappers, and a bunch of others. But we can probably forego a lot of drug offenses entirely.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    This is really, really misleading because you are looking only at Federal prisoners which is only ~10% of inmates (most being in state prisons). In the US, each state has its own penal code and things like murder or rape are generally not investigated or prosecuted by the Feds, so these prisoners do not end up in Federal prison. But drug trafficking that crosses state lines is, which is why drug traffickers (the vast majority of federal drug inmates are traffickers, not users) account for ~47% of Federal inmates. However just because they were convicted of drug trafficking doesn't mean they are non-violent offenders or did not commit any other crime. Moreover be aware that when you say "non-violent" crime, this includes things like breaking and entering, fraud, grand theft auto, bribery, witness tampering, etc. Very few people truly support not incarcerating a person because they only stole someone's life savings but didn't assault them. So what is the real data? It's tough to say because again each state has their own penal code and own statistics, but let's look at Texas: https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/documents/Statistical_Report_FY2019.pdf https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/documents/Statistical_Report_FY20... About 25% of those entering the correctional system Texas ("intakes") were convicted of a drug offense (see page 2 of the report), but because these offenders serve shorter sentences or are diverted out of prison, on average only 15% of the prison population at any point in time is there because of a drug offense (see page 10). Now I have no idea whether Texas is representative, perhaps other states are harsher on drug offenses, but I think it's safe to say that 15% is a reasonable upper bound.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  The increase looks to me like a very small bump in comparison to the whole decade: https://dataunodc.un.org/content/data/homicide/homicide-rate https://dataunodc.un.org/content/data/homicide/homicide-rate During that time incarceration rate was mostly flat or slightly rising, so no.
- geofft 5y ago
  That would be a reasonable argument if decreasing incarceration increased homicides. But, first, as you point out, homicides are already increasing despite our current strategy. That's enough reason to ask whether it's working. Second, when you leave prison, you don't have many good options. You haven't been working, and you will have trouble finding a job. You might have joined a gang while inside to keep yourself safe. If you didn't, you at least know people who did, who can offer you ways to meet your basic needs (food and shelter) and you might get involved with them. Or you might simply turn to crimes like armed robbery where your specific goal isn't killing someone - and then you do. Especially in reply to your comment downthread that it's worth locking people up for lesser crimes because some of them go on to commit homicide - that seems like a good demonstration that locking them up now doesn't prevent them from committing homicide later, and I would wager that a good fraction of them wouldn't commit homicide if they hadn't been locked up. Think about people who make $438K/year or even a bit less. Some of them are cool; many of them are terrible people - greedy, lazy (they might support themselves from investments or inheritances), rude and manipulative, entitled. Very few of them have any particular desire, motivation, or so much as occasion to commit homicide.
gruez 5y ago
>The saddest part is that, if presented with this information (cost), a substantial portion of the U.S. populace would declare that we are treating prisoners too well Do people actually believe this? AFAIK most of the cost isn't because of amnesties (ie. "treating prisoners too well"), it's because of the various staff/services/equipment to deal with the prisoners.
- kadoban 5y ago
  I would be _shocked_ if less than 30% believe that or worse.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- goldcd 5y ago
  That cost is quite incredible - that's $36.5k a month. So maybe each month: $5k for the cell $5k for facilities $5k for dine dining $10k each for 2 personal guards @$5k $5k for healthcare costs $5k car and driver on standby for potential court appearances and maybe a $50 per diem for discretionary spending. If the above isn't the case, does make you wonder where it is going.
  - gruez 5y ago
    from TFA: >It costs $438,000 to jail one person there for one year. Of this $379,216 goes to personnel costs
spectramax 5y ago
Lot of discussion around here is knee jerk and not nuanced. Criminal law is complex and there are areas where it should be reformed and other areas where we need better enforcement. We've seen the criminal justice reform as they have instituted in San Francisco city: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27216343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27216343
- crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
  Punishment has been shown to be ineffective and ignorant of ancestral/intergenerational trauma being passed epigenetically. This is a way we're societally creating trauma and poisoning our gene pool. It's literally suicidal, from a long-term perspective.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > ancestral/intergenerational trauma being passed epigenetically Can you cite any sources for this?
    - crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
      https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00808/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.0080... This was the first thing that came up when I searched google for "epigenetic markers of trauma." It highlights childhood trauma. I'll go ahead and note that one aspect of incarceration culture is numerous children losing the presence of a caregiver. This is for sure a traumatic experience for many and a singular way the government is suicidal.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    You understand that you are literally pushing a form of Lysenkoism, right? There is no such thing as trauma being passed down epigenetically.
    - colinb 5y ago
      I think that this is less clear-cut than you might expect. [0] talks about "Dutch Hunger Winter Syndrome" as a heavily studied counterexample. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_inheritance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_i...
rsj_hn 5y ago
> Convince people that we need to reform prisons and jail fewer people. Well, why should it convince people of that? Perhaps people are in fact being rational. When a necessary social role becomes expensive, it makes sense to make it cheaper, not to stop doing it. Are you going to get rid of courts because it costs so much to bring someone to trial? We have a large prison population because we have a large criminal class in this country. 5 homicides per 100K, 370 violet assaults per 100K. Those are committed every year. With these statistics, having ~400 prisoners per 100K is what you would expect, if not on the low side, since we haven't even started talking about non-violent crime. If you disagree, which of these do you think should not get jail time? Alternately, find a way to prevent crime.
- jzb 5y ago
  "Alternately, find a way to prevent crime." Easy. Stop criminalizing use of drugs and sex work. End the bullshit "war on drugs." We have a huge criminal class in this country. Wage theft[1], for example, is a huge criminal enterprise but almost nothing is done to stop that. We could also start working on real gun control like other countries that don't have a huge firearm homicide problem. That won't mean we end homicides, of course, but it would reduce the problem. [1] https://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-costing-workers-hundreds/ https://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-costing-...
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    The problem with always thinking there are easy solutions is that you never solve anything. OK, we release all the drug traffickers who are only guilty of that and no other crimes. Congratulations, you've reduced the jail population by 5%. Oh wait, an even bigger group of people now fill the prisons, but for theft. Oops. But if we free all those millions of imprisoned sex workers, that will solve the problem, right? Lol. Now that you've done all the performative ineffectual stuff, you still have the expensive prisons to worry about and no fix. So what do you - change the subject and move on to provide a facile solution for some other problem? I thought so.

newbamboo 5y ago

Seems to make a good case for getting vaccinated. If this guy got vaccinated like he’s supposed to he would be alive and wouldn’t have cost the tax payer >400k. I understand medical freedom for the non-incarcerated, but come on!

EGreg 5y ago

Now imagine giving homeless people a home. Do you think it might actually be cheaper than jailing them for various crimes later? Utah has done just that and proven it can be, indeed: https://www.cc.com/video/lntv3q/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-the-homeless-homed https://www.cc.com/video/lntv3q/the-daily-show-with-jon-stew...

rubyist5eva 5y ago
Can I have a house to prevent me from committing crimes later too?
- thesagan 5y ago
  Doesn't have to be a house. Could be a small room. Like the old Odd Fellows society that used to offer housing to folks.
- hkt 5y ago
  There are perfectly reasonable arguments for enshrining the right to decent housing in law, such that everyone would be entitled to it.
- burkaman 5y ago
  Yes, if you're really homeless, I would like to help you find a home.
- EGreg 5y ago
  If you are not homeless then you won’t be facing all that danger from attackers, go to the emergency room or be busted and jailed for some NIMBY laws to get the homeless out.
rightbyte 5y ago
Like a mental institution? Those have gone out of fashion since they were meanie with no alternative to offer for the ill. I don't buy that providing housing would solve the homeless crisis.
- 5y ago

nikkinana 5y ago

Gotta love sheriff arpio he was a genius!

DominikPeters 5y ago

This paragraph is just incredible: > The misery at Rikers is not for lack of resources. The jail’s population fell by half between 2012 and 2020, yet its budget grew by 24%. It costs $438,000 to jail one person there for one year. Of this $379,216 goes to personnel costs; less than 5% goes to services like substance-abuse treatment. The average salary for guards, after five and half years on the job, is $92,073. In 2012, the ratio of inmates to officers in the city was 7:5. In 2020 it was 1.6 officers per inmate.

gruez 5y ago
For all the hate on private prisons (despite constituting only 8.1% of the US prison population), there seems to be surprisingly little hate for prison guard unions.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  Why? Prison/jail guards aren't the ones keeping prisons/jails stocked with people. Don't forget these are NYC salaries. $92k/year does not go very far there. The implication that prisons and jails are some kind of make-work operation for the guards is pretty vile.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Why? Prison/jail guards aren't the ones keeping prisons/jails stocked with people. you could say the same for private prisons. in both cases they're incentivized to put more people away. for private prisons it's contract renewals, for guard unions it's job security. >Don't forget these are NYC salaries. $92k/year does not go very far there. >The implication that prisons and jails are some kind of make-work operation for the guards is pretty vile. Is it any more vile than the implication that private prisons and jails are make-work operation for the companies that operate them? It's also addressed in the article: "In 2012, the ratio of inmates to officers in the city was 7:5. In 2020 it was 1.6 officers per inmate.". What else would explain guard per inmate figure to more than double, from 0.71 to 1.6?

JasonFruit 5y ago

Cost aside, the U.S. have the largest government in history, and it's created the largest prison population in history. There's either something specially criminal about Americans, or else that huge government is occupying its excess capacity unjustly criminalizing its most vulnerable people.

hkt 5y ago
There is money to be made running private prisons - the fact is that there will without a doubt be a very strong pro-incarceration lobby in the US that will be highly successful at pushing an agenda which profits them.
Ekaros 5y ago
I probably could argue that whole perversion in judicial and legislative system stems from political system. Harsh on crime gets votes. As such people increasing penalties or getting more people jailed get more votes. Thus increased pressure for such activities. As person who lives in country with 4 different elections(presidential, unicameral, municipal and EU) I find the amount of elected positions USA just bizarre. Specially voting for judges or sheriffs or prosecutors...
nerdponx 5y ago
I don't think the size of the prison system is causally related to the size of the government. The main cause as far as I can tell was a wave of drug addiction epidemics and crime in the 70s, leading to a "tough on crime" sentiment in the 80s that persists to this day. Also there's a huge industry around private companies supplying contract services to prisons (including "public" prisons). Not to mention the fact that prison labor is dirt cheap it is an explicit loophole in anti-slavery laws. Follow the money.

jimmygrapes 5y ago

Couldn't read past the pay wall, but if the above the fold bit tells the story the headline misses saying that this isn't the (implied) average cost per person, but the actuarial cost of a single person's medical care. Glad to be corrected by anyone with the full thing.

Tycho 5y ago

Yeah but how much money (and harm) is society saved by having criminals off the street?

nerdponx 5y ago
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that sending someone to prison might actually increase their likelihood to commit crimes in the future. You could get a much better ROI by reducing the circumstances that lead to criminality in the first place.
- Tycho 5y ago
  How much of that involves just de-criminalising harmful acts so that the broader public bear the cost? For instance, SF declining to prosecute theft under the value of $900.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Decriminalizing theft has substantial costs as well: https://abc7news.com/target-hours-san-francisco-walgreens-closing-sf-crime-near-me/10854900/ https://abc7news.com/target-hours-san-francisco-walgreens-cl... For those people laid off, they bear the cost, but they are not the only ones, and the economic costs are nowhere near the real costs. A friend of mine owns a coffee shop that was robbed -- he had video of the event, but the police couldn't do anything. But he knew the guy who did it -- a local meth-head who hangs around the area, and later he saw him and they got into a fight and he beat the guy up. Point being, when the police refuse to provide basic protection, people start turning to vigilante actions, private security, metal detectors or shopping by appointment only, etc. Or they flee to jurisdictions in which their livelihoods are protected by the police. That not only raises costs, but it changes the society as a whole. There is a reason that no society has survived that tolerated theft, and it has nothing to do with economic calculations.
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      > people start turning to vigilante actions, private security ...and organized crime, which leads to more crime and more criminality, not less.

hkt 5y ago

Prisons are a racket. I strongly suspect that regulatory and legislative capture are at play, and that this explains why the US has the (frankly, crazy) incarceration rates it has.

missedthecue 5y ago
Half of all lobbying money raised to oppose cannabis legalization is from correctional workers unions. https://theintercept.com/2016/05/18/ca-marijuana-measure/ https://theintercept.com/2016/05/18/ca-marijuana-measure/
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Hold on there. The accurate statement is: "Roughly half of all the money raised to oppose one specific ballot initiative was from groups associated with police and prisons". Groups "associated with police and prisons" runs that gamut from thinks tanks that adopt a pro-police stance and obtain money from police unions to former law enforcement officials and anything in between. The article goes on to say that the Teamsters Union and Hospital Workers also opposed the initiative.

kennywinker 5y ago

It costs more to police and imprison people than it does to provide the social services (housing, food, medical care, transportation, dignity) that would keep people from harming society. Back when breaking bad was on the air there was a commonly repeated joke about "canadian breaking bad" where Walter White gets diagnosed with cancer and then gets treatment and never cooks meth. But it's not just a joke, it's real. And yet for a wide variety of reasons (many of which are incentivized by business) people would rather spend money to enforce and punish than to help and prevent.

crawfordcomeaux 5y ago

Such a high cost to remove people from society instead of help them learn to repair and meet their needs.